


We Will Be

by girlskylark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anxiety, Breakup, Coping with feelings, Fighting, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Galaxy Garrison, M/M, Mostly Fluff, Panic Attacks, Pining Keith (Voltron), Post-Kerberos, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Relationship Problems, SHEITH - Freeform, Scientist Shiro, Verbal Fighting, angsty keith, subtle smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-20 03:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 45,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8234161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlskylark/pseuds/girlskylark
Summary: Ignoring the fact that Keith was stuck in space with his ex was working pretty well, but now, he's not so sure. Saving the Holts comes with an entirely knew problem: facing the fact that Keith and Shiro's breakup is still relevant, no matter how much Keith tries to think otherwise.When it comes to saving the Holts from the Galra work camp a year after discovering Voltron, Keith realizes that he has a lot more to deal with than the team's response to finding Matt and Sam Holt. Shiro's mental instability compromises his ability to cope with leaving the Holts in Galra hands for so long, and brings along a string of emotions connected to Keith pre-Kerberos.





	1. [ all right ]

**Author's Note:**

> This story starts after the first season of Voltron as if a year passed since then. So there will be some references to events that happened in the first season to assist the prompt I assigned to this: that Keith and Shiro were in a relationship before Kerberos, and broke up. 
> 
> Imagine being stuck in space destined to save the universe with your ex whom you haven't seen in a year because he was abducted by aliens :|

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a [music playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKj8biYIMb0p6XNIXLU5bESWuD4Pu6wRu) for this story that you can listen to as you read :)

“I have arranged for the prisoner’s coordinates to be sent to your lions. Based on Pidge’s DNA samples, Coran and I have picked up a kindred signature that relates to Pidge’s own individual mark on our sensors. There are traces of it in the work camps on this planet, but we have to be wary—it may just be picking up past imprints. I want you to be careful going in there, Pidge.”

Keith allowed himself a moment to glance over at the Princess’s screen, and the subsequent, small icons where everyone else displayed their faces. When Pidge replied, he could see how monotonous she kept her expression. Checked and betraying nothing, but after everything, this had become a moment of anticipation and anxiety—for all of them, not just Pidge. 

They hadn’t had contact with other earthlings in _years_. Keith could hardly remember anything beyond the taste and smell that was worlds away. He could remember the smell of the desert heat, and what sand felt like getting stuck in his boots, and how suffocating it all felt some times. But then he could remember the moisture on his tongue at night, the cool, damp air, the smell of wet dirt and the musty, old aroma the shack gave off. 

He remembered more about his time in the desert than he did anything else. Perhaps it was because he spent so much time pushing away the past to focus on the present. Though, he couldn’t entirely forget about the past, considering that was what led him to the shack in the first place.

There were times when Keith sat in on the team’s late night musings, and felt homesick trying to remember all the things they did. Hunk, spouting off algorithms and astrophysics homework questions; Pidge, talking about her mother back home, and what they used to do when things were simpler—movies, books, video games. Lance tended to mention food, even more than Hunk—they were all missing hamburgers and corn on the cob. 

Shiro would contribute little, but those he did add were calculated and refined to moments that seemed arbitrary, but relatable to the others. Class exams, being able to drive a car, the zero-gravity chamber—a moment of excitement for all the cadets back in the day. 

“I’ll be fine.” Pidge’s voice broke through the dash, reminding Keith that now wasn’t the time to get homesick, not when they were this close to the Holts. 

Allura always had a way of showing her emotions subtly at times, or obnoxiously evident at others. Had Keith bothered to look closely, he would have pegged the crease on her brow to be that of concern. “I believe you will be. Coran and I will be in orbit—with the ground troops gone we will keep a look out for the emanate backup ship. Make haste with your work, please.”

“We will, Princess. We’ll see you after we free the prisoners,” Shiro responded, and a moment later, Allura’s screen blinked out. 

The ground was approaching fast, and Keith pulled the joystick up in time to break his landing. The smooth descent was something that reminded him of the luxury of riding a magnificent, sentient lion through space. His hovercraft back on Earth could hardly compare to the ease Red had.

Shiro divided the five of them up, reiterating their plan to scope the prisoner encampments, and take out any rogue Galrans that weren’t already evacuated in the fight before. Pidge would go ahead to the Holts’ signature mark while Lance and Hunk would follow behind, stopping at encampments along the way. The prisoners would disperse to aid the others, and, after the coast was clear up above in orbit, Allura and Coran would land the ship and start rewiring Galra pods to take the prisoners wherever they needed to return to. 

It would take time. Weeks, maybe, to organize the shuttles off the planet. Keith surveyed the surroundings as he followed Shiro’s lion in the opposite direction of Lance and Hunk. The floor of the planet was scarred by explosives and mining, and if there _was_ vegetation, it wasn’t there anymore.

“We’ll be hacking into the control base Hunk took out earlier,” Shiro was explaining to Keith. “Usually, Pidge and I take care of this, but given the circumstances—”

“I get it. Pidge’s family is her main priority right now. I can handle hacking into a Galra control base,” Keith answered, and tried unsuccessfully not to look snarky. He always forgot talking in the lions meant the recipient could _see_ his face as well. Shiro’s bland stare was enough to say he saw Keith roll his eyes.

The control base was far from where they landed, and involved passing encampments along the way. At the speed they were going, Keith wasn’t able to see them all clearly, but they were differentiated by bulky metal buildings, machinery, and usually beside divots in the terrane, or machine-made ravines creating crevices across the dirt. They traveled across one for a brief time, but the fact that it took more than a second to pass over told Keith just how massive these breaks were.

“It’s terrible, I know,” Shiro commented.

Keith murmured his agreement, and after a moment, added, “Ever since the Bulmera, Hunk’s been a real stickler when it comes to treating planets right. He must be having a hernia right about now.”

Shiro laughed, but it was strained and made Keith wince. It’d been a while since Keith last heard Shiro _actually_ laugh. In fact, he was sure he hadn’t, because since day one Shiro took his position as leader seriously. No funny business. At least, not usually, anyway.

Keith brought Red around the edge of the damage on the control center. It stood on the edge of a ravine, with elevator shafts dropping up and down like columns on an otherwise blank piece of cardboard. The battalions they took out were scattered over the ground where Red landed, and he was thankful they were all sentries—not _real_ bodies. The real bodies were closer to the control center, _in_ the control center, where Hunk’s collision course set off a round of explosions. 

“You ready?” Shiro asked, and Keith nodded, reaching over to shut down the panel on his dash. 

  


  


Keith stepped over a wired limb on the ground as he exited Red. In his hand was a flat, almost paper-thin rectangle capped on the ends with red bumpers. Shiro was already out of his lion, and upon seeing Keith, dropped a similar device on the ground. About a foot off the ground, the sheet of transparent material flickered to life, and glided over the ground with ease. 

Keith dropped his hoverboard an hopped on to it. Where his feet landed, red light illuminated, registering his armored boots and locking them in place. With a simple tilt of his hips, Keith was moving, and _damn_ did it feel good to move.

He never once skateboarded in his life, but he was sure after hoverboarding a time or two, he’d be hooked on skateboarding. If he ever returned to Earth. But for now, he was surfing on land, coasting up and over hills and climbing the staircase of the control center without hardly skipping a beat. He wove back and forth, laughing as looked back for Shiro. 

“These are incredible! Why don’t we hoverboard everywhere in the castle?” he asked, his helmet lighting with his voice.

“Don’t get too comfortable—Coran probably wouldn’t appreciate you crashing into everything on sight,” Shiro countered, and his light insult just made Keith laugh harder. In all honesty, Keith missed those rare times Shiro’s snide comments came through. 

They came to a stop at a noticeable break in the wall of the control center. The metal was torn into by Yellow’s claws, dented in, mutilated. Keith picked up on the faint, almost nonexistent stench of burnt materials. He was thankful for the helmet on his head. 

He hopped off his hoverboard and swept it up off the ground. With a tap of his fingers, the board collapsed into a handheld device where the bumpers snapped together. It was small enough to strap to the back of his belt. 

Keith braced a hand on the edge of the tear and assessed the melted edges, the frayed edges, the curved, sharp areas. He hoisted himself up and jumped to the other side, on top of a ridge of broken wall. He was about to hop down when he realized Shiro was staring at something, away from the control center.

“Shiro,” Keith called out, and instantly Shiro looked to Keith a split second before shaking his head. 

“Let’s get going—we don’t have much time,” he said, looking down as he pulled himself over to the inside of the corridor and took off at a jog down the hall. Keith hesitated at the opening before following after Shiro. He swore he recognized that look on Shiro’s face, when he looked at Keith for that moment. Dazed? No, not quite—it was the sort of effect some of the training simulations had on Shiro, specifically the ones involving Altean robotic sentries. 

It happened more than once, where Keith had to take a hit for Shiro when he seized up and couldn’t function. He hoped today wasn’t another day where that would happen. Shiro was doing better lately, as far as Keith could tell.

But then again, they weren’t as close as they used to be. A lot had changed. _A lot_.

  


  


They made a wrong turn one way or the other, and wound up in the midst of the damage, the _real_ breaking point. This was where the explosion originated, where the experimentation was happening, where the circuits and energy conductors were least stable at times. It broke open above and provided Keith a wide view of the sky overhead, and the milky-grey clouds passing by. 

“I—I don’t think this is right. We should be heading closer to the ravine,” Shiro said, and the hitch in his voice brought Keith’s attention away from the sky and to where Shiro stood farther back. Sweat was collecting on his brow, and for a moment Keith panicked—until he realized he was sweaty too. It wasn’t just Shiro. 

“You’re right. I think I saw a hallway leading in that direction,” Keith suggested, and started ahead. 

They backtracked a ways until Keith recognized the hallway that would take them eastward, towards the ravine. They passed windows looking in to experiment chambers and the like, and Keith was thankful that Hunk really did some damage here—they wouldn’t be starting this center up again for a long time.

As they turned the corner to the control room, Keith skidded to a halt and held his hand out to stop Shiro. He could hear something down there, but he couldn’t peg it as a voice or just a common system glitch.

“Stay here,” Keith said, summoning his bayard and evolving it into a sword.

He snuck down the hall and peered into the open control room. The ceiling was caved in and the walls were even less pristine, and if Keith looked closely, he could see the shape of Yellow’s muzzle having denting this area specifically. But there wasn’t time for that, because there was a figure by the control panel.

Keith glanced back at Shiro, and was startled to find him just a few steps behind Keith. “You go in, I’ll cover you,” Shiro said, nudging Keith forward.

He slide into the room low and poised, sword out. He walked cautiously behind the man, low so as to avoid the blinking, wary screen trying to function on the monitors. At last, Keith was close enough to knock the Galra guard off his feet. The man went down with a shout, grabbing for the edge of the control panel. His hands took out the energy source as Keith jabbed his sword down through the man’s back.

He got up off the ground in time to realize that there was another guard in the room, shouting from another entry door. Keith ran across the room, sword arcing, and taking out the guard by the neck. He kicked the body aside and ran to the doorway. There were anymore guards—it was just those two left.

“All right,” Keith said, dissipating his bayard and returning it to its hold. “Coast is clear. Shiro?” There was no response.

Keith hurried to the entrance where he last saw Shiro, but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the hall at all.

“Shiro!” Keith shouted, and had to remind himself to calm down. He didn’t need to shout for Shiro to hear him through the helmet but—where _was_ he? Where could he have gone? 

It was then Keith realized something was wrong. Shiro had been acting a bit strange, but it was always like Shiro to avoid it, to try and fight past it. Keith wondered if—

“Oh no,” he muttered, and started out the room in search of Shiro. 

Keith found Shiro around the corner of the corridor—he hadn’t made it very far in the state he was in.

Shiro was on the ground against the wall, trying to keep from collapsing altogether. His helmet was trying to clear the fog of his frantic breathing, so Keith could see the look of sheer panic in Shiro’s eyes. 

Keith knelt down beside him and placed a hand on his arm, only to have it jerked away. “Get away from me!” Shiro screamed, breathless. 

“Shiro—Shiro! It’s me, Keith,” he said, holding a hand against the wall to steady himself. “Listen to me, Shiro, everything’s going to be all right—”

“N-No it isn’t—it _isn’t_!” he shouted, hands going to his helmet as if to take it off, but Keith was quick to pull his hands away, even if it meant restraining them against his will. The air wasn’t safe for them here. “It isn’t all right—what if, what if—” His voice flickered out into heavy breathing. He didn’t try to take his hands back.

“What if what, Shiro?” Keith asked. “I took out the guards—there were only two of them, there aren’t anymore.”

“N-Not the guards—I can’t—I can’t face them not after everything. I-I never went back for them—I never—” Shiro stammered, voice choked and tearing at the seams. 

It was enough for Keith to understand what was going on in Shiro’s head. He was furious that he hadn’t predicted it before, or seen it before—of course it was logical for Shiro to have a flare up of memories with the Galra the day they’ll find Matt and Sam Holt.

“Shiro, that isn’t your fault—you can’t do everything, and in those circumstances it’s a wonder _you_ even made it out of there,” Keith rationalized, drawing Shiro’s wide eyes over to him. He was still breathing hard, but at least he wasn’t shaking anymore. Keith kept talking. “You had no resources, no way of finding them—but now we do. Now we’ll break them out. It will be all right, Shiro. Don’t blame yourself for this. You _saved_ Matt from the Gladiator. You’re doing everything that you can.”

Shiro gasped for air once more before closing his eyes. When they opened again, he seemed less wild and unsure. Keith felt something squeeze onto his hands, and he realized he was still holding Shiro’s gloved fingers away from his helmet.

“I forgot how articulate you can be sometimes,” Shiro commented, that same strained smile coming through the clearing fog on his helmet. 

Keith let out a breathy laugh, and was quick to pull his hands away again. “Yeah, well, I haven’t changed much,” he answered, pushing off of his knees and rising to his feet. Shiro stayed on the ground.

“And I have?” Shiro remarked, and instantly Keith winced, about to say that he didn’t mean it like that, but Shiro waved him off. “I’m not setting you up—I’m just being honest. You haven’t changed while I’ve… I am not the same person I once was. A lot has changed for me, and I’m just thankful that you’re the same. It’s something of a reassurance to me.”

Keith hoped the light on his helmet would put a glare over where his cheeks flamed red. He didn’t need Shiro knowing he was flattered. “Yeah, well, we should get going. You’ll need to do the glowy-hand thing and we’ll be out of here.”

Shiro sighed and pushed himself to his feet. For a moment, he leant against the wall to regain his strength. “Okay, let’s go,” he said, and started around the corner to the control room. Keith followed suit.


	2. [ fine ]

They entered the room where Keith observed the two bodies he left behind. He grabbed the one by the panel and dragged him away, giving Shiro space to observe the now blank dashboard. He raised his hands over it, pointing here and there to buttons as if cataloging them in his head. At last, he laid his hand down on the energy board, and the buttons began to glow.

Keith stayed a few paces back as the controls came to life and the monitors flickered on. They were damaged, of course, but the monitors weren’t what they needed. Keith unclasped the lock his belt pouch and removed Pidge’s supplies. 

Shiro told him where to plug in Pidge’s device before Keith went through the means of accessing and downloading the data. “This will be useful for other rescue missions,” Shiro explained to Keith.

“Maybe we’ll be able to fill in some of the holes in the castle’s data with this,” he said, only half-paying attention as codes went flickering across the screen in disjointed numbers and letters. For a moment, they were both silent—Keith, studying the monitor, and Shiro, with his hand on the dashboard glowing purple. 

After a while, the silence became uncomfortable. At least, Keith noticed it—Shiro was always calm, so Keith couldn’t be sure he felt the same until he brought it up. “We… don’t get much time to just talk, do we?” Shiro asked.

Keith stared ahead at the screen, fidgeting his feet. “What about?”

“You know what I mean.” Shiro’s blunt statement sent Keith’s skin crawling. He hated emotional chats, and Shiro knew it. Did Shiro seriously want to have this talk now? Evidently. “We haven’t talked about life back at Earth—and I don’t meant the frivolous things like food and classes and _regular life_.”

“Do you really want to talk about it?” Keith asked, and regretted how sour the words came out. It silenced Shiro instantly. “Sorry, it’s just you haven’t shown interest in it, not really anyway. I figured you didn’t want to—”

“Of course I wanted to bring it up,” Shiro interrupted, voice clipped and fast. Keith glanced at him briefly, enough to see that not even Shiro could make eye contact with him. “But I know it… it hurts and I hurt you. I wasn’t sure if you’d ever be able to… forgive me.”

Now Keith was staring at him, shocked and furious. This entire time—this entire time Shiro blamed himself. Of course he did, he always did. Keith had to remember that, and what happened no more than five minutes ago was proof of that. 

“What are you talking about?” Keith hissed. “It was the rational thing to do. You were leaving for God know show long, which turned out to be longer than expected—keeping a relationship with someone that far away would’ve been difficult no matter what. It’s not your fault we broke up. It was… mutual understanding, or whatever.”

The second Shiro looked at him, Keith turned away, biting down on his lip. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s fine.”

Silence enveloped them once more, and halfway through it, the control panel let out an aggravated buzz. Keith swore under his breath and slammed his fist down on the metal surface. “Dammit, their wall won’t break.”

“Call Pidge or Hunk—”

“No, I can do this,” Keith snapped, and reached across the panel to cancel out of the data hard drive and unplug Pidge’s device. 

“Take a second and breathe, all right?” Shiro suggested, which only infuriated Keith more. “It’s fine to get worked up but—”

“But what? Stop acting like my mom, God.” Keith snarled, jamming Pidge’s device back into the control panel and starting up the programs again. He glanced at Shiro, who was watching him with that concerned look pinching his brow. _Gee, great, now it’s_ his _turn to be worried_ , Keith muttered to himself. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s not like I’d know what having a mom is all about anyway.”

“Don’t be like that, Keith,” he complained, and Keith scoffed at him for it. “You’re being difficult. And of course it isn’t fine—it still matters. To me, at least.” 

Keith’s hand paused over the keyboard on screen, and it took a tremendous amount of effort to keep his eyes down. He continued typing, and activated Pidge’s device once more.

“I know it’s ridiculous,” Shiro continued, and huffed under his breath, as if trying to repress a smile. “But honestly? I always thought when I got back to Earth… everything would just go back to normal. Like I never left, like we never took a break.”

“Taking a break and breaking up are two completely different scenarios,” Keith muttered under his breath, and ignored how Shiro’s mic picked up on his intact of breath. 

Keith plugged in a few more codes from memory, from what Pidge coached him on, and at long last her device started picking up the data from the control center’s hard drive. Keith stepped back from the device, and glimpsed over at where Shiro watched him, his hand still glued to the dashboard. 

“You know what I mean, though,” he said to Keith, and he recognized that forlorn look that captivated Shiro’s expression. It made his chest seize up, and it was all Keith could do to keep himself from yelling at him to stop it. To stop talking about it. There was a reason he stopped thinking about it after these past three years—first when Shiro left, again after the abduction, and now, saving the universe. 

“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Shiro said, filling the silence Keith left between them. “I… I shouldn’t expect you to forgive me after I hurt you, and chose the Kerberos mission over us. And look where it got us. Stuck in space, fated to save the universe. I’m sure being stuck with your ex in a foreign galaxy wasn’t exactly on your plans that weekend you broke me out of the Garrison.”

Keith couldn’t help but scoff. “You’ve got that right.”

  


  


Kerberos was the turning point in both of their lives. Keith was living with Shiro by that point, on the side of the Garrison that had suites and partial-apartments for students participating in internship, government research, or advanced post-graduation studies. They were both in the same boat there—Keith was in the middle of a research study examining probe evidence of a subsurface ocean beneath one of Saturn’s moons, on top of his intensive pilot training for the Garrison. His main purpose for taking up the research study was for the scholarships, which would cover the cost of living in a Garrison suite. 

Shiro was a graduate, and working for the Garrison. Some of the employees at the Garrison lived in the apartments, and so they happened to be in a common area with a lot of the research employees that were all working on the same prevalent mission: Kerberos. 

Originally, at the start of it, Shiro was mainly interested in the background work—making sure everything functioned, and as one of the best pilots in the program, he assisted in a lot of the engineering of the spaceship that would take the scientists to Kerberos. The first time they offered to bring him onto the exploration team, he declined.

“I couldn’t even imagine being so far from Earth,” he told Keith as an excuse, but that excuse became a subject of both good and bad. It was terrifying in the sense that he’d be so far from civilization, but exciting in the sense that he’d be discovering new possibilities. He’d be a part of a team that would make history.

The excitement outweighed the terror.

Keith remembered that day well enough to want to forget it all the more. The truth was this: Keith wasn’t even sure anymore how long Shiro seriously contemplated going to Kerberos.

It was after Keith’s classes, which ended before Shiro returned from work. They normally didn’t see each other until dinner, so it wasn’t unusual for Keith to check their mailbox and divvy it up. But after being in an apartment on the same floor as the other Kerberos employees, Keith knew a few names, and one of them happened to be the head of the mission. 

As Keith carded through the mail, he hesitated over that familiar name. His hands were full, so he stuck all the mail under his arm and waved his card over the door sensor. Once inside, he tossed his ID, backpack, and extra mail on the counter in the kitchen. After studying the envelope for a while longer—long enough to know for a _fact_ it was addressed to Shiro and not him—Keith took out a knife from the kitchen drawer and slit it open.

Inside Keith saw the starting of an acceptance letter—the sort Keith opened when he was accepted into the Garrison space exploration program. It had the Garrison’s official logo in the upper lefthand corner, the headmaster’s name, that sort of thing, and to top it off, it was addressed to Takashi Shirogane. 

They were expecting to see great things from his participation as the Kerberos pilot.

They wanted to congratulate him on such an auspicious position.

Keith could only stare at it, a hand on the counter for support. His grip on the edge was tightening, until he felt his nails burning from clawing at the granite. 

Shiro _told him_ he wasn’t going to go to Kerberos. Had he been _lying the entire time?_ As soon as the thought came to mind, Keith was seething. He wondered how gullible he’d have to be to not pick up on the fact that Shiro was lying to him the entire time. One of the many things that made them different was this simple fact: Keith was incapable of lying while Shiro could, if he wanted to. So he _could_ have lied—but why would he? 

Did Shiro not care about _anything_ he was leaving behind? How long would he be gone?

_No_ , Keith told himself. _That’s only if I’m able to convince him to stay._ He wanted to add _“with me_ ”, but that took on a distinctly selfish tone. He didn’t want to _think_ about how it would benefit Shiro because it would mean accepting the fact that Shiro would have to abandon him. Shiro would leave Keith behind, he’d have to if he wanted to make his mark on the world, and this was his path. 

There could be other callings, Keith rationalized. Shiro didn’t _have_ to go to Kerberos to make his mark. But this was the most apparently, realistic option to take at the moment. 

It took hours for Keith to come to this decision. And, after trying to rationalize Shiro’s thought process on his own, he felt less inclined to punch a wall or punch Shiro.

At eight, the apartment was completely enveloped in darkness and Keith hardly noticed. He left the letter sitting on the counter and was now stopping himself from pacing by sitting on the couch in the living room. He had his knees pulled up to his chest, and his backpack near his sock-covered feet. After a while it became difficult to study his notes and homework so they lay abandoned on the coffee table. 

He was left to fiddle with his fingers until he heard a gentle knock on the door, and then the handle turning. Shiro always knocked before entering, even if it was _their_ apartment.

Shiro came in laughing, and as Keith glanced over his shoulder, he saw one of Shiro’s coworkers heading down the hall, calling out their goodbyes over their shoulder. Once the door was closed, Shiro let out a breathy laugh and finally said, “Sorry I’m late—I had to stay at the lab late to help Meredith clean up. There was an incident that involved an explosive sink and water everywhere.”

“Sounds like fun,” Keith said, turning back to look at his hands.

There were the usual noises of Shiro setting his bag down, taking off his coat, putting it in the front closet. The light in the kitchen went on, and illuminated part of the living room. Keith moved on to check his phone, and wished that whatever made him so quiet would suddenly go away. Normally he’d tell it how it is—bring it up right away, just to fix the problem faster. Perhaps it was the lump in his throat blocking all the words from rising up. 

“I had dinner with Meredith, since I knew I was going to be out late. You got my text, right?” Shiro asked, and a moment later the refrigerator opened, and then Keith heard something moved in the sink. “Did you eat?”

“No, I forgot,” he confessed. 

“I see you got the mail, though,” Shiro commented, almost humorously. 

_Dear God how can he be so oblivious?_ Keith groaned internally. He reminded himself that while Shiro was normally hardwired to be observant, it was hard to keep that up after a long day in the lab. A lot of the times, on days like these, Shiro and Keith would put on a movie and not even ten minutes in, Shiro would be unconscious.

And then Keith felt guilty. He couldn’t bring it up now—not after Shiro had such a long day…

But why should he worry about how _Shiro_ would take it, when Shiro kept this information from him? The fury from his initial reaction started building again, no matter how hard he tried to repress it. 

Then he remembered: the letter was still open on the counter.

Keith turned around, and looked in time to see Shiro standing still, hip against the counter, and letter in hand. For a second, he was staring at it, and then he was staring at Keith. 

“Keith,” Shiro started, sounding breathless in a way that made Keith’s stomach twist. He turned away, knees falling to one side. 

“When did you apply?” he asked with a bitter voice. “Before or after you told me you weren’t interested?”

“Keith,” he repeated, this time closer. His hand came to Keith’s shoulder, and he jerked away fast, getting to his feet and turning on Shiro. “I wasn’t even sure they’d accept me—”

“ _Accept you?_ ” Keith shouted. “Accept? You’re the best damn pilot here—as if they weren’t begging for you to go on the mission! You’ve got to be kidding me. No one’s _that_ humble.” 

Shiro still had the letter tight in his grip, leaning against the back of the couch as Keith seethed on the other side. After a moment of silence, Shiro swallowed hard. “You… don’t want me to go.”

“Maybe I would have!” he yelled. “If you would have _told me sooner!_ ” 

“It isn’t for a while yet—we have time—”

“Fuck, Shiro,” Keith spat, shaking his head. “I don’t care how much time _we have together_. Two months isn’t a fuckton of time. That isn’t ‘ _a while_ ’.”

Keith stepped around the coffee table, and the distance made him feel better now that he couldn’t fully see Shiro’s expression twisting from worry to downright terror as he tried to grapple with the situation. “O-Okay, maybe we don’t have a whole lot of time,” he corrected. “But I wanted to tell you, I just wasn’t sure if it was a for-sure thing. I didn’t want you to worry unnecessarily about this, before I even got the results back.”

“Is it a for-sure thing? Now that you have the results?” Keith demanded, though he already knew the answer. But Shiro hesitated, and so he continued, “You’re entitled to make your own fucking decisions. But don’t leave without explaining yourself first.”

Shiro looked down to the letter pressed between his hand and the couch. After a moment, he said without looking up, “I’ve made my decision, and I’m going to Kerberos. I’m sorry Keith—I just—I never even _imagined_ being apart of something that could change history. It wasn’t a goal of mine going into the space exploration program—it’s a dream I never thought possible. I-I have to take it. I have to.”

Keith’s fists were clenched so tight, his nails were digging into his palms. “Did you ever even consider that I might take it personally?” he asked. “That you’re putting this above me, your boyfriend?” 

At this, Shiro quickly shook his head, and started to move around the couch, abandoning the letter on the cushions. “This isn’t about us—I’m not doing this because I _want_ to be away from you! That’s ridiculous, Keith,” he insisted, reaching for Keith’s fist. For a moment, he forgot to be angry with Shiro, and let him take it and flatten out his fingers. “You know I love you. I love you so much, Keith, and I’m sorry if you thought otherwise because of this.”

A burning sensation started behind Keith’s eyes, and instantly he held his breath and willed the feeling to recede. Some irrational thought process was insisting he stay angry, insisting that he keep his scowl firm so Shiro would know just what he thought about the entire ordeal.

When he didn’t say anything, Shiro pulled Keith’s hand up to his lips and kissed his fingers. His lips were dry but soft, and they quivered slightly as he pulled away, watching Keith with that firm, unwavering gaze. “Can you forgive me?”

“For what?” Keith asked, his tone flat. “For not telling me or for leaving me?”

“Keith—” Shiro’s voice broke off, because it said enough: that Keith was being ridiculous, yet again. That he was overreacting. It was enough to push that repressed fury to the surface.

“What, can you blame me?” Keith retorted. “You’ll be gone for, what, _years_ , maybe? It’s not like a Skype call is going to make up for you not _being here_. You won’t even get to see me graduate! I’ll move out of this goddamn apartment and get a place by myself and do _whatever the fuck_ without you—”

“It won’t be _years_ , exactly—it takes eleven-and-a-half months to get there, eleven-and-a-half back—” Shiro realized that rationalizing it wasn’t helping. “But I see your point.”

“By the time you get back… by the time you get back, I’ll be gone. And—and you might still be working for the Garrison. I might not be,” Keith said, shrugging helplessly because it sounded a lot like a conversation they had before. 

Shiro brought it up: “I know you don’t want to stay and work here after you graduate. When I get back, and you’re somewhere else, I’ll look for jobs around there, or if the Garrison has any positions located near your employment. We can work on it. We’ll be fine, Keith. It’ll be fine.” 

Keith’s jaw started hurting, and he realized how harshly he’d been frowning. He raised his free hand up to massage it, and scowled at the floor as he did so. Something told him it wouldn’t be fine. They wouldn’t be fine if Shiro left. He didn’t want Shiro to go away, and not be there to rub circles over the back of Keith’s hand like he was doing then.

But, he was able to pull his hand away and, after a moment, cleared his throat. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“That’s fine,” Shiro said. “We can talk about it later.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

This seemed to stall Shiro, and Keith used his momentary shock to step away and pick up his backpack and homework. “I’ll be in the study. I have an essay due tomorrow than I have to finish.”

Shiro’s forehead was creased from the way his eyebrows turned upwards, and his eyes begged for some way to make everything fine again. It was like he knew Keith would sleep in the study that night, away from the bed they normally shared. 

“Okay, I’ll make something for you to eat,” Shiro said instead, as Keith was already halfway out of the room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is some [Sheith college AU fanart](http://gurlskylark.tumblr.com/post/151501562635/all-about-that-college-au-art-by-gurlskylark) I made prior to finishing up this chapter. I think I might just post as soon as I finish chapters, see how that goes.


	3. [ protected ]

Before Keith made the study into his bedroom, he had a habit of nestling himself against Shiro’s neck. On some nights this caused Shiro to wake up with stupidly-painful neck cramps, having to keep his chin high enough to accommodate Keith’s head underneath it. But on most nights, it didn’t, and Shiro never complained about Keith’s hot breath on his neck, or how the moisture from his breathing would accumulate on Shiro’s skin.

Shiro had a habit of putting the underside of his feet flat against Keith’s bare legs. Keith was certain it wasn’t because he had a fetish for hairy legs. It was always something he jolted awake to in the middle of the night, but after a while Shiro’s feet were no longer blisteringly cold, so then it was okay. Initially Keith always had the instinct to knee him wherever his knee first hit, and that was a problem. He once kneed Shiro directly in the lower back—sometimes Keith still laughs about it. Just like he couldn’t help subconsciously hitting Shiro, he also couldn’t help laughing about it.

Long, long before they were ever an item, Keith never thought he’d become a snuggler. The concept just seemed weird and unnerving, and inhibitive. Every now and then it still seemed like that, but then Shiro would wrap his arms around Keith from behind, while he was working on homework or reading. Keith would forget about his initial thoughts of not liking the closeness of it. The casual intimacy. He liked it. 

When Keith made a list of the things that made him put up with a relationship with Shiro for all those years, snuggling was definitely up there. The list still existed, somewhere, in that shack in the desert miles outside of the Garrison. He knew the list well enough so that not thinking about it didn’t even let him forget it. 

Near the bottom of the list—number twenty or so—there was “Weird Things” which he defined as _Things he thought disgusting pre-relationship_. Like accidentally mixing up toothbrushes and not really caring. Or walking in on Shiro pissing and not really caring. 

Above that, around number fifteen, there was “Always Having A Movie-Watching Partner”. Movies were huge for them. Keith didn’t even know Shiro was as big into movies until they moved in together. Sure, they watched movies together before that point, but never as much as they did now. Keith rarely watched them on his own now, because he loved Shiro’s commentary.

Which brought him to number fourteen: “Unnecessary Comments That Are Actually Not Annoying”. He used to think the quiet was great, and it still was. But with Shiro around, Keith was content mainly because Shiro often made sounds and noises and soft statements under his breath either relevant or not. Sometimes he could hear them from across the apartment, or when Shiro would be cooking and mutter the recipe from behind his hand.

Number ten really should have been number five, but he thought of it too late at the time. And that was “Having Someone To Wash My Hair When I’m Too Lazy To Do It Myself”, which wasn’t often. At the time, Keith liked having short hair—it was easy to maintain. But now, after having long hair for so long, Keith started to wonder what it’d feel like to have Shiro’s fingers scrub through it. Probably wonderful.

  


  


Shiro’s hand was still on the dashboard when the progress bar reached halfway. They’d been silent for most of it, until Keith started remembering the list. It was getting harder to remember little details he tried desperately to forget about Shiro, the details that _weren’t_ on the list. Like what Shiro’s hair looked like before the abduction. Was he always so buff? Neither of them worked out much before Kerberos, but Shiro always managed to stay fit. Keith blamed Shiro’s perfect diet for that.

“You said,” Keith started, hesitating for a moment when Shiro turned to look at him. “You said that I haven’t changed at all. What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing negative, obviously,” Shiro corrected, and Keith rolled his eyes. “I’m serious. And obviously some things have changed—your hair is definitely longer.”

“Yeah, but that’s besides the point.”

Shiro grinned a little, looking away briefly as he pondered Keith’s question. Keith was sitting at one of the chairs bolted to the ground, and watching Shiro in a way he hadn’t let himself before. “Your temper is the same, your beliefs, your morality—the important things. Your humor is the same—dry and sarcastic.”

“Gee thanks,” Keith said, face straight even as Shiro laughed.

“You’re obscene interest with stage weapons is now your life, so that hasn’t exactly changed when you think about it,” he continued. “You’re still introverted, and guarded. Protective. It’s interesting because you never cared much about other people, even the people we hung out with usually. But with the team you’ve really opened up and it means a lot to me. That you’re able to care about them, in your own way. Sometimes it isn’t effective, but it’s thoughtful.”

Keith’s face heated up the more Shiro talked. He had to tell himself that he shouldn’t be embarrassed for being recognized as someone who cares. “Aside from the obvious, you haven’t changed much,” he told Shiro, leaning his elbows against his knees and staring intently at his hands. “I… remember that any time conflict happened in the lab, or between the people on your team, you’d always be the one to end it. You initiated most of our meet ups and—” Keith started laughing, mainly at how ridiculous he was for remembering it, “—and when we first started dating I was too awkward to even suggest anything. So you’d plan everything out ahead of time and you tried even though I wasn’t exactly ‘there’ if you know what I mean.”

“You were totally there,” Shiro argued. “We collaborated.”

“It was mostly me just saying I was fine with whatever,” he said. “You have to admit, that’s being a little aloof.”

Shiro laughed, and used his free hand to cover his face. “Y-Yeah, now that I think of it, you were _really_ aloof. Way to give me zero social cues on whether or not to proceed with the relationship.”

“Honestly I was just glad you stuck around,” Keith confessed, and instantly sucked in his bottom lip when Shiro glanced at him. “I mean, I didn’t know what I was doing at all. So I guess you being a persistent stubborn ass broke me out of my shell.”

“Persistent stubborn ass?” Shiro repeated, one eyebrow quirking up to a sharp peak. “Me? _You_ were the one who bullied me for weeks to get a dirty laundry hamper.”

Keith slapped his hands over his face, doing all he could to keep from bursting out into laughter. “Oh my God I can’t believe you remember that.”

“It was the first time you visited my dorm and the first thing you did was critique the state of my dirty laundry,” Shiro exclaimed, and Keith stifled his laughter behind two hands. 

Keith forgot about the progress bar until the monitor screen suddenly changed to say that the download was a success. Instantly Keith was on his feet, and Shiro’s attention was back on the screen. 

Keith unplugged Pidge’s device and put it securely back in his armor’s belt pocket. As he locked it, Shiro removed his hand from the dash and his fingers returned to normal. He flexed them and before letting his hand drop to his side again.

For a moment afterwards, Keith forgot what they’d been doing. He stood slightly facing Shiro, and he knew what he wanted to do—he wanted to tell Shiro that they were okay, whatever that meant. Would that mean anything? Would it lead anywhere? Keith wasn’t sure if they were capable of _going_ anywhere, or _being_ anything, not with everything prioritized above a goddamn relationship.

“We need to keep moving,” Shiro said at last, and Keith nodded in agreement. “But you have to admit, it was pretty improper of you to insult how I treat my dirty laundry the first time you visit my dorm.”

Keith snorted and shoved him by the arm. “Improper my ass. Anyone who has a floordrobe is enemy.”

“Does Lance have a floordrobe?”

“ _Shiro_.” Keith seethed, but Shiro was already laughing. 

Keith unclasped his hoverboard from the back of his belt and activated the surface. The bumpers split instantly, and the surface shimmered to life. He dropped it to the ground, and it sprung up several inches from the ground before rising to about a foot. Shiro did the same, and soon they were both swinging through the doorframe and careening around corridor corners. 

This time, Shiro took the lead, and Keith felt a moment of sharp giddiness prick his chest. He shouldn’t be feeling this way—he had no right to assume that he’d ever have a chance with Shiro. The man was practically charged with keeping Keith and the others in order— _the others_. God, Keith was eternally grateful that Lance never knew about Keith’s past relationship history or else they’d never hear the end of it. 

Pidge also seemed like the sort to pester about little details like that. If Keith knew anything about Pidge, it was that she had the ability to start a war with her snarky little side comments. For whatever reason she was normally salty with Allura—Keith didn’t want to add _that_ to his plate of Things To Deal With.

And _if_ , amazingly, they were able to hop over this mountain of baggage, how would the team react? It wasn’t as if they were the only seven people in the castle anymore—their family grew between planets and races, and there were always people there now, entering and leaving and worshiping the ground Allura walked on. Keith was thankful for that—Hunk would get so stir crazy he would even start rambling to _Keith_ , of all people, and go out of his way to hunt Keith down. In what world was Keith a tentative listener? Evidently one that took place on a magical spaceship-castle.

They swerved to a halt near the break in the wall, blocked off by the wreckage and boulders accompanying it. Shiro hopped off his hoverboard and stashed it on his belt for the time it took to climb the incline and over the ridge. Keith did the same, reaching up and grasping the edge. He was thankful the armor was light, otherwise lifting himself wouldn’t have come as easy as it did.

He rolled over the edge and landed flat on his feet. Shiro held a hand to the side of his helmet, and up until then Keith forgot that he was in a private chat with Shiro. He opened up the pathway and heard Hunk giving a report to Shiro. 

“—to the dark side of the planet where Pidge’s last signal went out.”

“Got it. We’ll meet you there,” Shiro answered, hurrying to the stairs where he dropped the hoverboard down and glided down the edge, shouting behind him, “Get to your lion! Pidge is in trouble.”

Keith floundered for a second before mounting his board and taking off at record speed down the steps and onto even ground. “What? What happened?”

“Hunk and Lance will explain when we get there,” Shiro shouted back, twisting his hips back to avoid a sharp vertical angle on a hill. Keith took the other side, and merged alongside Shiro. The lions rose magnificently high above the deserted war zone, and cast dark, heavy shadows where the sun was setting. As they passed by beneath them, Keith’s general stats registered a thirty degree drop.

They were on task again. Shiro cruised up to where his lion bowed down and opened its jaws and the entry way. Keith snapped his hoverboard closed as Red lowered her head and parted her teeth. He ran up the walkway and into the cockpit where, upon entry, the controls lit up and enveloped him in a warm glow. As Red launched off the ground and into the air, Keith collected himself into the familiar swing and glide of navigating his favorite spacecraft. Being with Red and connected to her during flight made everything on his mind completely vanish. It was irrelevant. Now, he could be confident in every small thing he did, and in everything Red communicated to him. 

She was fully adapted to sync with the other lions, and he instantaneously felt the push and pull of Shiro’s lion weaving above a protruding structure, directly in front of Red. He could feel the distant hum of Yellow and Blue on her radar, and how they were converging on Green’s location. The tension focused where Green’s forcefield was thrown up, which meant Pidge was missing from him. Pidge wasn’t with the Green Lion.

A side panel popped up on Keith’s dash, and he minimized it so Shiro’s face wouldn’t completely intercept his field of vision. “Pidge found the location of her family, but the mining grounds are unstable. There was a Galran fighter jet that tracked Green to the mine. When they engaged in combat, it took out the roof of the mine.”

Keith looked to Shiro, a sliver of terror sinking into his chest. _That could mean…_ “That signature Allura picked up—would it be able to tell us if the collapse…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence, and neither could Shiro. “No. It’s faint and we can’t even be certain this is where they are still. It might just be remnants of them.”

For whatever reason, this information didn’t ease Keith’s worries. Still, he said, “Let’s just hope they weren’t in the collapse. What happened with the fighter jet?”

“I don’t know. We’ll just have to see,” Shiro answered, and his window closed as they picked up the speed, and in seconds the sun disappeared behind them, and they were suddenly on the night-side of the planet, away from the sun where temperatures dropped dangerously low.

Streaks of light appeared here and there over the land they passed over, and Keith focused on them. Red opened a captured image of one, and it appeared to be one of the stations. There were others all along the mining tunnels, and as Red slowed at the appearance of Yellow and Blue near the horizon, Keith got a closer look. 

Smoke and dust was rising from where the land caved in. Red landed beside Hunk’s lion and instantly Keith was out of his seat and running for the exit. Pidge wasn’t in her lion, that meant—

Lance and Hunk’s reaction told Keith that his anxiety was justified. 

There were standing at the edge of the collapse, which A) didn’t look very safe and B) wasn’t smart considering what just conspired there. Keith went to them cautiously, and glanced at the massive pit that covered the expanse of several tunnels, all stacked on top of one another. It was a wonder that the mines stayed together this long.

“Pidge!” a voice broke through Keith’s speakers, and Shiro was running to them, breathless and horrified. “Pidge, are you there!”

“She hasn’t been responding,” Lance confessed, and Keith looked to him with surprise. He rarely ever heard Lance sound so empty. And to think this was the same guy who put a whole new definition to the word “energetic”. 

Shiro put his hand to his comm unit and said, “Allura, do you have anything on Pidge?”

“Our sensors say she’s still alive but—but I don’t see why she isn’t picking up. Her stats suggest her helmet hasn’t been removed,” Allura explained, and from farther away Keith heard Coran say, “Her heart rate’s low—she must be unconscious, either that or really _really_ relaxed.”

“I know I wouldn’t be relaxed under several tons of rocks fall on me,” Hunk said.

“How do we get down there?” Shiro asked, and instantly they were objecting.

“Go _down_ there?” Keith blurted out.

“Do you _want_ to cause another collapse?” Lance exclaimed. “We wait until Pidge wakes up!”

“What if she’s unconscious because she was _kidnapped_ ,” Hunk cried out, shoulders bunching up to his ears. “And they knocked her out with a swift upper-kick to the chin?! And when she wakes up they’ll force her to be quiet lest we discover their hiding spot!”

“ _Hunk_ ,” Keith hissed in warning.

“What? I’m just being realistic.”

“That _isn’t_ realistic,” he argued. “That’s being irrational and jumping to conclusions.”

“You’re one to talk! Oh God—I’m sorry, that just came out I meant nothing by it I swear,” Hunk squeaked, clasping his hands over the mouth of his helmet. Keith glowered at him, arms crossed until a firm hand dropped to both of their shoulders and Shiro said:

“It might collapse if we all go down there at once—I’ll go down alone and scope out the damage, see if I can find Pidge.”

  


One of Keith’s top three points on his list marks the most prominent feature in Shiro’s personality. It was actually what made him notice Shiro first, the day they met. They might never have crossed paths, or talked to one another, had Keith not left the campus in search of a new pair of shoes. It was strange because Keith rarely left campus, except for emergencies like this. The Garrison was a stickler for uniforms, and Keith just so happened to be wrapped up in a lab incident that involved acid on his shoes and the teacher panicking and chucking them into an acid-proof disposable waste bag. 

So Keith didn’t have shoes. Great. And the problem wasn’t even _his_ fault—it was the kid across the lab table who was the idiot, _not_ Keith. He was clear on putting that point across. It wasn’t Keith’s fault. Keith could have lost a foot thanks to the asshole with the eyedropper full of acid. 

There was a shuttle that came infrequently to and from the Garrison, so Keith was in a rush to catch it after classes. The bus driver gave him a weird look as soon as he stepped in, and Keith figured it was because he was in socks. But thankfully, the “no shoes no service” rule didn’t apply here. It _was_ a public bus after all.

Keith’s backpack was about as dense as a black hole, so he dropped it onto the ground between his feet and, for the remainder of the bus ride, read up on his organic chemistry textbook for the midterm coming up next week. Contrary to popular belief, Keith didn’t _just_ care about his performance in the flight classes. If he wanted to be a pilot, he’d have to be a well-rounded one. 

That said, he wasn’t _great_ at organic chemistry, or chemistry in general. It was a wonder he was ever even able to understand romantic chemistry later on in life. Sometimes, if he thought about it long enough, he stressed himself out enough to vow never to deal with the emotional crap that came with a relationship. So, he just never had one. Platonically or romantically.

His stop came so he tugged the string that would signal for the bus to pull over. He zipped up his backpack, book under one arm, and stood, hand rising up to grab the metal bar. It was nearing dusk, but not quite there, so the lighting in town was a warm autumn yellow, and just chilly enough to warrant a jacket. The town was a small one, but a college one, which meant that a lot of the people up and about were students, which also meant Keith exited on this stop with several others in front of him.

They happened to stop right at the curb where Keith intended to jump to. _Distracted, as per usual_ , Keith mused irritably, staggering to the side to avoid colliding with them. They were talking loudly and laughing and one guy happened to swing his arm in just the right direction to slap Keith’s book right out of his hands and off the curb. 

It landed as you’d expect 1200 page text book to land—hard and loud and enough to gather the attention of all those assholes standing too close to the curb outside of the bus stop. And they all saw as the bus rolled away, it’s wheels pushed right over the book and completely dented the spine, the edges of the covers, and broke the binding.

“Are you kidding me!” Keith exploded, turning on the kid who slapped the book out of his hand.

“Holy shit—I’m so sorry,” the guy said, and he actually sounded genuinely apologetic. 

“That book cost me three hundred dollars!” he exclaimed. “What the hell!”

“Look man, I didn’t mean it—I’m sorry— _Jesus!_ ” the guy screamed like a child when Keith came at the collar of his jacket, only to be reeled back by his friends. 

They weren’t aggressive about it, but Keith shook away from them anyway and shoved them back. One of them got down off the curb and picked up the book. All the pages were still there, and it was usable—if you put all the pages into a binder that big. 

“You piece of shit. You better pay for half of it unless you want foot up your—”

“Hey,” his friend said, holding the book. “He said he was sorry. This is for OC, right?”

Keith stared at him, seething, fists bunched up at his sides and backpack sliding off his shoulder. “Yeah, and I have a fucking midterm next week—”

The guy glanced around his friends and pointed to the one girl in the group. “You still have your OC book from last year, right?”

“Yeah, I was gonna sell it but I mean, I could lend it to you for the rest of the semester,” she said with a shrug. They all looked a little guilty, or maybe they all just naturally looked like they wanted to help. 

The guy handed Keith his demolished textbook and said, “What’s your name? We’ll get you the textbook tomorrow or something.”

Keith took the book and adjusted the strap on his backpack. “Keith Kogane. I’m a freshmen.”

“Holy shit—a freshmen in OC?” the guilty guy said. “I’m real sorry about your textbook. I swear we aren’t those cliche awful upperclassmen.”

“I gathered that,” Keith shot back sourly. “What are your names?”

The helpful bloke reached out a hand and said, “Takashi Shirogane, but my friends call me Shiro so you can too.” Keith accepted his hand and thought nothing of it as he moved on to meet the other guys. The guy who dropped the book was Pierce, a fellow studying astrophysics. The one who opted to lend Keith her OC book was studying atmospherical sciences and meteorology, which explained why she kept the OC book in the first place—her name was Meredith. After finishing his rounds, Shiro raised his eyebrows at Keith and pointed to his feet. “Are you… not wearing shoes?”

Keith scoffed and said, “Maybe.” It got a laugh out of his friends, so he explained that he was on his way to get new shoes. They excitedly suggested a shop down the street, since they were more familiar with the town that Keith was. After saying his goodbyes, accepting a few more apologies and contacts in his phone, Keith was off crossing the street listening to their conversations dwindle in the opposite direction.

He realized that he really appreciated Shiro then, and, although grudgingly, admitted that he admired the man for standing up to Keith. He cared about his friends enough to stand up for them. He cared about strangers enough to offer assistance when needed. Keith couldn’t believe he managed to get on the good side of a bunch of friendly upperclassmen. Usually he wasn’t so lucky, and this situation could have gone in a completely different direction—he came so close to clocking that kid right in the face. But Shiro stopped it from happening. 

It’s why Keith put this in the third spot on his list: Protects The People He Loves.

  


If Shiro had a list, Keith was certain that was not on his. Keith aspired to learn from Shiro, and if that meant stepping in now, he should do it. Shiro saw too much as it was: Keith didn’t want Shiro to be the one who found Pidge, and whatever was down in that cavernous pit. He couldn’t let Shiro go through trauma like that again, and so he chose to protect Shiro from it.

“No,” Keith argued, grabbing Shiro’s hand before he could jump from the ridge. It shocked the group, and brought everyone’s attention to him. He reached up to his comm unit and cut off the others, so all they saw was Keith’s mouth moving and not the words that came out—except Shiro. “No, you can’t go down there. Shiro—do you really think you can handle seeing Pidge like that? And if you find Matt and Sam down there?”

At this, Shiro’s face tightened and he scowled at Keith. “This isn’t about that—”

“It _is_. Let me go down there. You stay here. I can save Pidge and find her family, if they haven’t found each other already,” Keith said, and after a moment of silence, Shiro nodded and stepped back. He opened communication to the others. “I’m going down. You all stay here and update me if anything happens.”

“Well that was weird why isn’t Shiro going down?” Hunk asked, and instantly Lance elbowed him in the side.

“Shut up—I’d much rather watch Keith fall to his death.”

“ _Lance_ ,” Shiro snapped.

“What?” Lance cried out innocently.

Keith flipped him off before leaping off the edge, his jetpack roaring to life and easing his descent into the channels of the mine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GAH I went in and edited the chapter:  
> I gave two of the characters names from the scene with the textbook: we find out that Pierce was the one to slap the book out of Keith's hand, and Meredith--mentioned in an earlier chapter--is the one who plans on lending her OC book to Keith. I felt like I needed to make Shiro's group of friends more diverse there. MEREDITH YOU STRONG HUMAN BEING putting up with a bunch of nerdy fellas because she is one herself. AND ALSO CLOSING UP THE LAB THAT DAY WITH SHIRO gosh, she's just making a name for herself.


	4. [ alone ]

Keith’s freshmen dorm was reluctantly shared with an awkward fellow whom he wishes not to associate with his second meeting with Shiro, but again, reluctantly, his roommate was involved. Keith thinks his name was TrollhouseCookie because that was his League of Legends username and refused to give it up for real conversation. He shortened it to Cookie because he couldn’t deal with the Trollhouse part for the life of him. 

Cookie was, in all honesty, stuck with the mindset that going to a space exploration school would improve his overall performance in MMORPG games, specifically under the science fiction genre. That said, while Cookie was invested in school, he opted to remain aloof. Which meant skipping all classes and managing to pass exams by some miracle of the holy divine gods of World of Warcraft or some shit like that. Keith rarely followed along. He was certain he lost half his hearing to cranking up the volume on his headphones all day, just to avoid Cookie’s rage quits.

It was because Keith’s headphones were blaring so loud that he missed the sound of someone knocking on their door. He saw Cookie get up from his setup after a while, and looked up from his homework in time to regret letting him answer the door.

“Hey, this is Keith’s room right?” It was a girl’s voice, and Keith winced as Cookie was instantly up in arms and floundering more awkwardly than usual. 

“O-Oh hey! Yeah, yeah, this is Keith’s room—our room—we’re roommates how do you know Keith? Are you in classes together? I-I really like your hair,” Cookie blurted out with zero self-control, but Keith instantly realized that wasn’t out of the ordinary. Cookie usually had no self-control—hence the several PS3 game disks shattered in the garbage. 

In retrospect, they were actually really similar, if Keith was super into MMORPG games, which he wasn’t.

Keith bolted out of his chair and pulled Cookie back from the door. He opened it a bit further, and rapidly took in the sight of Meredith holding the OC textbook up. Behind her was Shiro, who waved, and Pierce, who offered a weak smile. 

“Thanks for bringing this by. Are you sure you won’t need it?” Keith asked, sounding just as awkward as he felt. He could feel Cookie breathing down his neck, so he closed the door a bit further.

Meredith eyed Cookie warily and offered a smile that was on the verge of being apologetic. “No, not really. If I do I’ll just text you.”

“O-Okay,” Keith stammered. He elbowed Cookie in the side and hoped he got the hint. “If that’s it then I’ll just…”

“Actually,” Shiro interjected, “you mentioned the OC midterm. We all took it last year so if you needed someone to study with, we’re available this afternoon. Pierce got a perfect score.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say _perfect_. I got one wrong.”

“The curve made it perfect,” Meredith added, “and also screwed the rest of us over. But we’d really like to help you out so you’re the Pierce of the class.”

 _Holy shit_ , Keith’s brain screamed. He couldn’t really function—it’d been an entire month and he hadn’t managed to hold a conversation this long with _anyone_ in his classes unless it was related to school. This was related to school. As soon as he realized that he cursed himself for thinking otherwise. “That sounds… perfect.”

They arranged for a place to meet—the study room on the third floor of the upperclassmen dorms. So that afternoon, Keith had to navigate the upperclassmen halls. They were more up to date than the freshmen dorms, with polished walls and fresh carpet that didn’t look like it came straight out of the 90s. The doors were powered by card, and slid open with gentle hisses. Keith didn’t have to deal with doors until he reached the study room, which required card access. His card didn’t work with it—he wasn’t an upperclassmen.

From the window he recognized Pierce’s bleach-blond hair, with Meredith sitting across from him. Shiro’s back was to him, but when he knocked on the glass, he turned to look and leapt to his feet. 

The door hissed open and Shiro welcomed Keith with a simple, “Did you get lost at all?”

“Not really,” Keith confessed. “Your side is better than ours by far.”

“I wouldn’t say _that_ , exactly,” Meredith said, waving a pen in the air. “Everything’s automatic except the toilets.”

Keith stared at her for a minute before realizing she was being sarcastic, so he settled for a snarky response. “Again, your side is _way_ better than ours.” Shiro laughed as he stepped around from behind Keith and took a seat at the table. It was a six-person table, so Keith took the one next to him, and wondered if he’d seem standoffish to Pierce, like he was holding a grudge (which he was, but he wasn’t going to admit it). Thankfully, the man didn’t give him a weird look.

To his surprise, they all brought their old notes with them and were collaborating on problems for Keith to solve. Meredith even had her old exam handout, and while they worked on their own homework, Keith set to work on their makeshift exam. 

He focused entirely on the problems at hand, brow creasing inwards and pen tapping against his cheek as he thought through the mathematics of compound chemical structures. It took ages to complete the individual problems, as it always did for Keith, but all that time must have paid off because as Shiro checked the answers and the work, Keith only got one wrong out of ten.

“Don’t get frustrated—this is really good. Your work’s right, but some of the numbers are wrong. Try it again,” he told Keith, passing him the paper. 

In all honesty, studying with a bunch of upperclassmen was intimidating. He managed to impress them with the knowledge that he was a freshmen taking organic chemistry, but even he had to admit he wasn’t the greatest in the class. There were always people above him, and people who pegged him as the sort who slacked off. He didn’t want these guys to think of him like that. He didn’t want Shiro to think of him as a slacker.

After he convinced himself that he admired Shiro for his initiative the day before, Keith spent the rest of the day trying to convince himself otherwise. It was ridiculous—how much of a cliche could he be? A freshmen looking up to a junior. It was childish and Keith loathed to think that he _had_ to have someone to look up to. He’d heard some names tossed around in class, of teachers referencing past pupils, and after Meredith mentioned Pierce’s perfect score, Keith realized that his name was brought up in conversation about the midterms. He remembered hearing Shiro’s name mentioned in physics class: the elite pilot that would “go to places we can’t even fathom”.

But they always called him Takashi, and it took a while for Keith to piece it together. There was a leaderboard of sorts in the simulation classes, and on all of them Takashi was near the top, or _at_ the top, with perfect marks. The records were accumulated throughout the history of the Garrison, which made the feat all the more impressive. 

Keith realized this as his mind started floating away from his studying, and instantly dropped his pen. He discretely look at Shiro then, who had an elbow on the table and his head resting against his hand, staring intently at the book on the table. Unfortunately, the angle was just enough for Shiro to catch sight of Keith looking at him. He quickly turned away.

“Need help?” he asked, tapping the table near Keith’s notebook.

“No,” he answered, and decidedly chose to ignore the fact that he was next to a legend. He swore one time in a simulation class, a girl flipped out about how she bumped into Takashi in the hallway and hoped his skills would rub off on her. 

Keith just hoped Pierce’s OC skills would rub off on him. He just wanted to pass organic chemistry and _not_ have to retake it next semester.

  


  


Keith did pass the organic chemistry exam, but not before eight consecutive study sessions with Shiro and his friends—bless them for putting up with more than one of Keith’s explosive remarks of frustration. In the middle of the week, when their classes swamped them with homework, Pierce and Meredith dropped out of two of the sessions to study in the privacy of their dorms. It left Keith with only Shiro.

It wasn’t until their first time alone that Keith realized why he was so jittery before every meet up. Being around people seemed to cause his adrenaline to spike, and his anxiety to shoot up with it. Sometimes he would psych himself out so much that he wouldn’t even make it to the study room and he’d already be hyperventilating. Of course, it always came in short, brief spurts and he thought it was just one of the many things introverts had to deal with. 

Once he was with them, though, that anxiety vanished. They were so calm and collected and seemed as though they genuinely cared about how Keith was, and how he’d do on his exam. They didn’t have to, but they did, and they didn’t have to laugh at Keith’s sarcastic banters, but they did. Keith wondered if they ever looked forward to seeing him like he did with them.

However, there was the problem with his social anxiety, which is what he later self-diagnosed himself with. Anxiety. He hated to think that wanting to be with Shiro and his friends would cause him such emotional and physical exertion. After every time he hung out with them, Keith would completely collapse on his bed and not move until morning to get ready for classes. And even then he never really woke up until he was on to his second class.

That feeling he’d get, like someone had just taken his heart and squeezed it like a stress ball, spiked the second he approached the study room and found Shiro by himself in there. It wasn’t because he was worried about Meredith and Pierce ditching them—he realized quickly that Shiro was the reason for it. Shiro was the reason Keith lost his shit every day getting overly thrilled by the idea of hanging out. 

_I’m completely insane_ , he rationalized as he stepped into the room. _You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m not_ that _obsessed with him_. “Where’d the others go?” Keith asked, approaching the table.

Shiro looked up from his book and smiled at him, eyebrows raised. “You made it—I thought you skipped out too.”

Keith frowned and look at his phone. He was a bit late—seven minutes exactly. “I got distracted,” he lied, and took a seat. “What do you mean ‘skip out’?”

“Pierce had to finish a lab and Meredith needed to study in quiet,” Shiro explained. “But I can still help you out if you need it.” 

He was surprised to find the grip on his heart starting to twist. God, he really didn’t need some phantom hand giving him a snakebite right now. “If you have to study for something, I don’t mind working in my own room.”

Shiro huffed a laugh, leaning back into his chair as if prepared to say something, but thought better of it and shook his head. “No, no—I’m fine here.”

“What were you going to say?” Keith asked, taking a seat and dropping his backpack onto the table. 

“Nothing, it wasn’t nice.” 

At this, Keith scowled, and the grip on his chest vanished. “If it’s about me you damn well better say it to my face—”

“ _No_ , no, nothing like that,” Shiro said, now bursting out into laughter. “You said you’d be fine working in your own room, and I thought to myself: _‘With TrollhouseCookie?’_ ”

Keith was so surprised that he lost his composure, and managed to snort instead of laugh. Shiro, still laughing, tried to explain himself: “I mean, I’m sure Cookie’s a good kid and all, but from what you tell me…”

“He’s fine. I figured everyone gets a quirky roommate at one point or another,” Keith said, waving his hand. “I mean, he’s passing all of his classes so that seems to be working.”

For the first hour all they did was talk, which was strange considering usually Keith went straight to work. They weren’t deep, personal topics, but the subject of Cookie transitioned into the article Shiro was reading, which led to their obvious shared love of space travel.

“Do you ever think about how the universe is just constantly expanding,” Keith asked him, and Shiro, who was now leaning against the table with his arms folded over one another, nodded his head vigorous.

“Oh yeah, it’s incredible. You know what’s also incredible? The fact that Andromeda is moving _towards us_ instead of away, which means that eventually—far far from now, nothing we need to worry about yet—”

“Andromeda’s going to collide with the Milky Way,” Keith finished, smiling a little. “It is incredible. A professor of mine thought it was mind boggling how it’s a complete anomaly, going against Newton’s first law of motion. That is, if you believe in the Big Bang Theory.

“But my point about bringing up universe expansion was that—If everything is moving farther away from each other, by the time we master space travel, it will take twice as long to get anywhere other than our solar system. Yeah, we might be able to colonize one of Jupiter’s moons and all, but what about studying the other side of the universe?” Keith asked, and shuttered a little. “It freaks me out, thinking about how alone we are out here. Sure, Andromeda will be closer, but imagine all the stars disappearing from the sky because they’re too far away to see.”

Keith had his eyes down, studying his fingers and the spec of dirt under one of his nails. He could feel Shiro’s eyes watching him, and when he looked up, Shiro blinked and instantly blurted out, “I don’t think we’re alone. There are definitely aliens.”

Keith snorted and said, “That’s not what I mean, but I think that too.”

“So you believe in aliens?”

“Is that even a question? We’re in a space exploration program, of course I believe in aliens!” Keith exclaimed, laughing.

“Pierce doesn’t believe in aliens, but then again, he does have weird beliefs. He thinks the zombie apocalypse is going to happen,” he confessed. “But anyway, it’s definitely plausible. We can’t be the only solar system, the only planet, with a Goldilocks Zone—the perfect distance from a star to make life possible. We can’t even number the amount of galaxies out there…” 

Keith hummed in agreement, and felt the distinct urge to lay his chin down on his hands and listen to Shiro talk more about his classes and his ideas, his beliefs. The study room was small, and empty except for them, as it was most nights. He had his feet propped up on the chair at the end of the table, and Shiro had his book pushed to the side, all attention on Keith. 

“I like talking to you,” Shiro confessed after a moment, and a heartbeat later it felt like someone punched Keith directly in the ribs. “But we really need to get back to studying.”

  


  


One of Keith’s earliest fears in life was the dark. The dark was something that enveloped everything—the space between spaces, between planets between solar systems between galaxies. Whatever is beyond the edge of the universe, Keith decided was intense, overpowering blackness that could swallow a person whole and never return them to the known universe. Just like how the Garrison couldn’t comprehend the unknowns of the universe, Keith couldn’t know what was in the dark. 

It didn’t take long for Keith to realize that his fear of the dark transitioned into the fear of the unknown, and then he wasn’t _as_ scared of the darkness. It wasn’t the darkness that terrified him—it was what was _in_ the darkness. But he could overcome his fears. 

And so as Keith rocketed towards a break in the rocks and dropped into the darkness of a mine tunnel, Keith reminded himself that the unknown was something that _could_ be known, and he had to find out what happened to Pidge. He had to bring her back to the known universe. He had to protect her, and Shiro, and Lance, and Hunk. He’d save the universe with them.

He couldn’t do that without them, which meant he _would not let Pidge die down here_.

His helmet when into night mode, and soon the entire cavern was illuminated in a monochrome green. He went for his hoverboard, and, once dropping it down, the light from it amplified his scope of the tunnels he cruised down.

Allura’s voice coached him through the channels, avoiding wreckage and taking a fifty-meter long drop that brought him closer to Pidge’s location. The elevator shaft he went down was warmer than the surface, and as he dropped lower, the heat pooling in the core of the planet brought the temperature up to a suitable degree.

A small map was on his screen that showed his position in relation to Green. Its z-axis was another several meters below Keith’s current position, so Keith took the next break in the tunnel below, to the epicenter of the collapse, and where Keith found Green sitting in the glowing orb of a partial barrier.

“All right,” Keith said, “I’ve found Green.”

“Good, now the playback of Pidge’s tracks would take you through a tunnel adjacent to the one you’re in now. Follow it to the end,” Allura said to him. “Good luck, Keith.”

He snapped his hoverboard closed and rocketed over the mound of boulders and metal beams, towards the glow of the Green lion. There were massive slabs of solid rock and dirt overhead, just barely held up by the edges of the collapsed site. Through the cracks between some of the larger boulders, Keith could see the infinite stars, and how they were ever expanding outwards, away from him, away from Earth. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't even begin to describe how hilarious I thought the TrollhouseCookie part was.


	5. [ free ]

When Keith observed the damage of the collapse, he found bits and pieces of Galra tech between rocks. He picked up a robotic hand on his way to the tunnel Allura marked on Keith’s map, and later avoided picking up one he knew came from one of the work camp prisoners. 

He tossed the robot hand aside as he leapt from a boulder and slowed his descent with the jets. The opening for this tunnel was small and narrow, due to a rock partially covering it. Keith’s hand scraped against it, easing his way through. His feet dropped to the ground evenly, and he took off running, only to be met with a wall just past his field of vision. 

He looked to the wall and realized that it wasn’t, in fact, a wall, but a fallen mound of rock. With a groan he was about to signal for Allura’s help when a distinctly robotic whir erupted from ahead. Galra purple flared to life in Keith’s vision, and instantly he had his bayard in hand, and his sword slicing to the right as a Galran drone approached. More lights flickered to life between the rocks—they were trapped in the wreckage, but some managed to survive.

The drone held up a gun that fired shots of purple light at Keith. He blocked one with his shield and it instantly ricochetted off to the side. It hit the wall of the cave and Keith swore he heard the groan of the unstable surface. 

_What the…_ Keith started, ducking rather than engaging the next hit. Usually the shields absorbed the impact but…

“Perfect,” he sneered, a smirk growing as the mindless drone shot at him again. He angled his shield and the laser hit it, vibrating against his arm, and shot straight back at the collapsed rock. It hit one of the half-alive drones and shook the rocks loose, sending a few tumbling over the robotic victims and leaving an opening near the ceiling. 

Keith charged for the drone, and swung his shield against the drone’s neck before diving his blade through its back. He started his ascent.

Tumbling down the other side, Keith took out another crushed robot with a swift kick to the cranium before gaining his footing again. As soon as he did, though, he was shocked to find several facing staring at him with both shock and terror. This was the dead end Allura told him about, which meant—

“Are the guards gone?” someone asked Keith, interrupting his thoughts. He was looking frantically around them, looking for Pidge. 

He stepped towards them, saying, “They’re gone, you’re safe. How many of you are there?” 

“Two and six,” the girl said. _Okay, whatever that means_ , Keith thought, and after surveying the crowd he figured she meant twenty-six. “Some of our people are injured from the cave-in.”

“I can help them, but first I need you to tell me if you saw someone in a green suit like this, ye-big, come through here—may or may not be unconscious,” Keith said, raising his hand to the approximate height of Pidge just as someone stood up from the back of the cavern—in a space suit.

The person seemed to study Keith for a minute before finally talking—no translation needed. “Are you here for Katie?” he asked.

Keith knew he should have prepared something to say. He wasn’t good at on-the-spot introductions, and the first time he met Shiro was proof of that. “I’m here for all of you, but yes, specifically Katie,” he answered, stepping through the people around them. As he closed the distance, he saw the green suit he was looking for, lying on the ground in the presence of a few of the other injured victims, and another man in a space suit. There were a few aliens wearing masks and such, but nothing quite as bulky as those humans needed to wear.

“I…” Mr. Holt started, and Keith stiffened when he realized that the pause was full of emotion, of distress and disbelief. “I-I wasn’t sure if—I thought she came alone,” he confessed, voice breaking into a sob as he reached his arms around Keith’s shoulders and held his hand to the back of Keith’s helmet. “I am eternally grateful that she isn’t alone.”

“We aren’t alone,” Keith answered, patting Mr. Holt’s back as Pidge’s brother stood up. The instant he did, Keith realized that there was another thing he should probably mention, and he’d forgotten it until now. _Shit, I really should have planned something to say ahead of time_. “There are… others.”

“Others?” Matt said, and looked down to Pidge lying on the ground and up to Keith again, as if he was trying to piece something together.

“Can you take us to them?” Mr. Holt said.

“I can, but we need to start moving everyone to the other side of the collapse,” Keith explained. “We’ll bring the injured ones out first.” 

And so, the freed prisoners started aiding in the movement to bring their wounded friends over the ridge and to the other side, where the carcasses of Galra robots gathered. As Keith organized the removal, he contacted the others: “I’ve found Pidge—she was caught in a collapse that saved some of the prisoners from Galra sentry guards.”

“Is she otherwise okay?” Allura asked, and Keith’s mind instantly assumed she meant whether or not Pidge was missing a limb. He felt like shit for thinking it.

“She’s fine. Her family’s with her,” Keith explained, and he heard the relief in all their voices, and Hunk even shouted in victory. Keith couldn’t help but laugh, and there had been a lump in his throat that came out as a near-sob. It was a close call, but he managed to repress it. 

He went to Pidge and, with her brother’s help, managed to hoist her up into his arms. “A rock came down and she hit her head pretty hard. She shouldn’t be out this long, though,” her dad said, helping to cradle Pidge’s head against Keith’s arm. He stared down at her and the scrapes of dust that now peppered the white on her uniform. 

“We’ll be able to fix her up back at the ship,” he reassured them. He figured now wasn’t the time to start explaining that the ship was actually a castle, and that by “fix her up” he meant stuff her in a healing pod for a day or two. That might be a bit much for two earthlings, but then again, he wasn’t sure how strange it would be for them now, after spending a year in captivity. 

Keith shook his head to avoid that thought process.

He let Matt through to the other side first so he could hand Pidge to him. Throughout this process, Keith let her father know that Pidge was definitely alive. “The helmets pick up on the vitals of the user, so other than the fact that she’s unconscious, she’s fine,” he said, and paused as he started climbing, Pidge now flopped over his shoulder for this process. Some of the others were helping him from slipping and sliding back down the pile of rocks, and Keith jolted when one of them forced their hand directly on his buttock. He reminded himself that the bum probably wasn’t as scandalous here as it was on Earth.

Matt’s helmet showed little of his identity, but Keith could see the sweep of his long ginger hair cover his forehead. Keith raised Pidge over the ridge and let Matt catch her under her armpits and drag her feet over. The folks on Matt’s side kept him from falling backwards and assisted in transitioning Pidge to the ground. 

_But how do I get her out now? We can’t move her lion without disrupting the mines…_ Keith thought, panting as he rolled onto the other side and saw that there were at least seven victims from the collapse, and nearly twenty others that would need help getting up to the surface. He really didn’t want to make twenty-some trips up and down to the very bottom of the mine on his hoverboard.

Keith opened communication with Allura. “Do you think the others could move the rocks above the Green lion?” 

“I don’t know. Let me look into it,” she said.

“There’s twenty-six prisoners down here and no other way out,” Keith insisted.

“I know—I’m looking into it,” she repeated, this time annoyed. Keith huffed, scowling down at Pidge before realizing that almost everyone was staring at him. Matt was staring at him curiously.

“You’re human, aren’t you?” he asked, just as his father slid down the rock face to meet them.

“I am. My name’s Keith,” he said, reaching his hand out to Matt, and then his father. “I used to attend classes at the Garrison.”

Sam Holt hesitated to release Keith’s hand, and shared a brief look with Matt, who was staring at Keith. If only he could see their expressions beyond their helmets—but then Keith remembered an important fact: Spending months in the same ship together meant learning everything about one another. 

_Shit, I shouldn’t’ve even said my name_ , Keith mused mournfully, plucking his hand out of Mr. Holt’s hand.

“You… Do you know anything about Shiro then?” he asked Keith. “My son used to be with him on another planet before being relocated here. We haven’t heard anything since.” All Keith could respond with was an awkward “Uh…” before Matt interrupted.

“How is it possible that the Garrison sent people this far?” Matt asked. “We don’t have that sort of technology yet. Are there others from the Garrison?”

“They’ve reached Earth, haven’t they?” his father said, and the solemn way he said it made Matt falter. 

“No, they haven’t,” Keith said. “It’s a long story, but yes, there are others from the Garrison.” _Including Shiro_. He didn’t add that part.

“Keith,” Allura’s voice entered his helmet, and he turned away from Mr Holt and Matt to listen. “I think we may be able to dislodge the rocks, but it will take some time. Are you in a relatively safe location away from the epicenter?” 

Keith looked down the tunnel, where he couldn’t even see the exit. But then again, the mine ceiling did collapse here. He blamed that one on Pidge when she purposefully dropped the rocks to take out the Galrans. 

“I’d say so,” he answered. “How long do you think?”

“I do not have all the answers, Keith.”

He groaned and muttered that he’d just sit and wait then. It wasn’t like there were people _dying_ or anything. His snark wasn’t appreciated, and Allura let him know that.

And so, Keith was left in the cavern with curious aliens wondering who he was and why he was so much like the other two humans with them. And it was obvious they wanted answers, because the second Keith returned to the Holts, Pidge’s father asked, “So who else is on your team?”

At this point, it’d been too long for Keith to confess that Shiro was with them. It should have been the first thing he said, if he planned on breaking the news to them. _Dammit_ , he mused dreadfully, but instead said, “They’ll be down soon”

  


  


After Shiro was officially on the team that would go to Kerberos, he spent even less time in the apartment, and there were entire weeks where Keith didn’t see or speak to Shiro once. It was obvious that to avoid the eminent heartbreak of their relationship, Shiro invested his entire being into the Kerberos mission and, Keith had his suspicions that Shiro even spent entire nights there. 

But that day after their fight, Keith woke up with his head on his arms over a textbook, and a blanket placed around his shoulders. If he would have been more awake, he would have wondered when Shiro came in to give him a blanket.

The last thing he remembered was sending his essay to the printer, so he went to retrieve it, staple it, and groggily exit the study. He didn’t change out of his clothes from yesterday, but it was a uniform, so no one would notice if he wore it two days in a row. So the second he realized Shiro was in the kitchen, he wondered why he even left the study if he didn’t need to change.

Shiro looked up from making coffee, and for a solid minute they both just stared at each other. “Morning,” he said. “Want some coffee?” 

“Hell yes,” Keith muttered, and stretched his arms up and behind, and his back cracked. Shiro opened the cupboard and Keith added, “In a thermos.”

He took down Keith’s thermos and started pouring coffee into it. “I’ll be at work late again. I have a meeting,” Shiro told him, and Keith noted how he hesitated in saying it. It obviously had something to do with Kerberos. Keith realized that now everything revolved around it for Shiro, and had been for some time. It was Shiro’s job before he was the pilot on the mission, anyways.

“Fine.”

Shiro looked at him, back at the coffee thermos, and then back to Keith, but this time with a pointed stare. “Was that intentionally unsympathetic or are you just tired?”

“Both.”

“ _Keith_.”

“What?” he blurted out. “I just woke up—literally the only thing I’ve done today is staple some papers together and walk out here. What do you want from me?”

“To know if we’re okay still,” Shiro said, passing the thermos over the counter. Keith glared at him for a moment before snatching the coffee and raising it to his lips. He felt the heat leave moisture on his skin with the taste of black coffee lingering on it.

Keith was still glaring at him when he said, “I’m still thinking about it.”

He wasn’t sure what he expected Shiro’s reaction to be, and he was disappointed to find that all Shiro did was drop his shoulders. He nodded shortly to Keith, dropping his eyes back down to his own coffee. “All right. I’m here whenever you decide on an answer. I won’t pressure you.”

  


  


Keith was beyond ecstatic when the last of the boulders were moved out, and the constant rumbling and vibration ceased in the tunnels. It put everyone on edge, whenever they heard another part of the mine collapse, but they were safe. 

As all of them started walking to the exit, Keith picked up Pidge, though after studying the Holts for a while, he realized that they were more than capable of carrying her themselves. He guessed he just wanted to relieve them of the work, but would they appreciate that? Did they want to hold Pidge close and never let her go again? Keith wasn’t sure. He never had a family like that before.

They barely approached the opening when a familiar blue glow slipped through the crack in the rocks and three figures started running towards them. “Pidge!” Hunk was shouting, throwing his arms up. “Pidge—thank God! Don’t scare me like that again!”

“She can’t hear you, Hunk,” Keith said bluntly.

“Yes she can, don’t badmouth her,” he insisted, leaning down to observe Pidge as if she was a newborn baby and he wanted to pinch her cheeks. “Can I hold her?” he asked.

“Go for it—my arms are numb,” Keith confessed. Hunk cradled his hands underneath Keith’s and slowly Keith retracted himself from her. As he did so, he noted that Lance had already approached Pidge’s family. 

“We found them!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms up as he approached Matt. The man laughed nervously, but still accepted the hug Lance gave him. “Well, Pidge found you guys, but same thing.”

“Pidge?” Matt asked, “You mean Katie?”

“Yes, yes, that one.”

“Keith mentioned you guys are from the Garrison. Are you an engineer?” he asked Lance, who retracted instantly to glare at Keith.

“You totally lied to him, didn’t you? You know I’m a pilot!” Lance snapped, and Keith couldn’t help but smirk in response.

“No, no—it’s just that I was an engineer in the space program,” Matt explained, and Hunk gasped, and Keith was sure he would have been holding his heart if he wasn’t already holding Pidge. 

“No. Way. I’m an engineer too!” he exclaimed and as they exploded into an exciting rampage about insane alien technology, Keith found Shiro standing farther back.

He seemed to become a statue, staring in complete and utter shock at the reunion, and the aliens around them. His helmet illuminated the wide-eyed look on his face, but Keith was content knowing that Shiro wasn’t panicking, not like before. He was composed, and remained composed as Keith nudged his arm. 

“I didn’t tell them—you tell them,” he told Shiro, who understood instantly. He nodded and finally made the step towards the Holts.

He approached Pidge’s father, who, once close enough, brought his hands to his mouth. “Sam,” Shiro started, but didn’t finish when Mr. Holt grabbed him by the arm and reeled him in for a hug. Matt’s attention shifted from Hunk when Shiro spoke, and instantly stood at attention, waiting until Mr. Holt pulled away, and Matt was able to see Shiro for himself. 

“Shiro!” he shouted, and Keith’s heart twisted when he heard Shiro laugh, sniffing past the tears, and let Matt barrel into him for a hug. “Oh my God, you’re alive! You’re alive! I thought you died—I thought they’d kill you—”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Shiro said, his sobs on the verge of laughter. He tucked his face against Matt’s shoulder, so the others couldn’t see his spotty red face. Lance “Aw!”ed somewhere near Keith, so he lashed out with his fist to punch him in the arm.

Keith was quick to realize that Shiro needed a moment with the Holts, so he told Hunk to bring Pidge back to the Yellow lion and to the castle while Keith and Lance start shuttling the prisoners to one of the surface stations, and the injured ones to the healing pods on the castle. “You got it boss,” Hunk said, marching as if he was a soldier, back to Yellow.

Keith helped transport the injured people to Blue where, with the assistance of some of the healthy free prisoners, Lance was able to fly them up to the castle. He dropped Keith off on the surface to fetch his lion before dropping back down and shuttling people through the gaping mouth Red offered down to the ground.

The aliens all stared in amazement at the lions as they moved onwards and upwards. As Keith flew the short distance up to the surface, he had several six-digit hands clinging to his arms and shoulders and hair, but he chose not to tell them off. They were Galra prisoners up until recently; he could stand loosing a few strands of hair if it made them feel better.

Red lowered to the ground near one of the buildings and Keith saw them all out. “I’ll sweep the building—but tomorrow we’ll see about getting you pods to go home to your original planets, or wherever,” he explained as he led the way through the stairs. 

“Thank you, Voltron paladin,” one of them said, and the others murmured the same. 

Keith walked the length of the hall, opening all the doors and taking count of the people already in the building. There were a few kitchen aids in the basement, and up above there was a security panel that appeared completely empty. Keith figured that was a good thing, but just to be sure he checked all the closets and small nooks and crannies before taking leave. On the way out, he became swamped with aliens either hugging him or groping him to show their thanks.

There weren’t any other prisoners down below, so he opened his comm unit to Shiro and said: “Everyone’s out—I’ll need help carrying Green up to the castle.”

“Okay, I can help with that,” Shiro answered. 

Keith peered down into the chasm where he could see the mix of green and purple rising up against the rocks. From this far, the lions looked to be the size of a regular house cat. It was a long, _long_ way down. 


	6. [ okay ]

TrollhouseCookie left every Friday to go home for the weekend, which meant a twenty minute drive off campus. It really didn’t make sense for him to have a dorm room, or to be roommates with Keith anyway. But, they managed to coexist, and having the weekends to himself was surprisingly nice. Keith basked in the silence of an empty dorm room, without the constant slicing of swords and grunts of monsters through Cookie’s speakers.

It was nearing the end of first semester when Shiro first visited Keith’s dorm—as in, walked inside, sat down, and stayed for a few hours at most. Keith wouldn’t have called it anything special, since Pierce was there too, and they were just playing a show Keith recommended to them. Meredith wasn’t interested because she was against the poor morals displayed by half of the cast: she specifically ranted about Tyrion and Cercie Lanister. “Anyone who drinks and fucks that much must have a death sentence, and Cercie is an evil witch-lady who manipulates people!” 

Keith argued that if she knew that much, she must have watched it. She grew red in the face and yelled at Keith for his snarky assumptions. It wasn’t even _that_ snarky.

They watched _Game of Thrones_ whenever possible, which meant only on the weekends and only for two episodes at a time. They were into the fifth season, and Shiro and Pierce were still trying to get down the names. “So that guy’s the sword-swallower?”

“That’s not his name,” Keith said, shaking his head.

“But he swallows swords?”

“Do you even _know_ what that means?” Shiro laughed at Pierce, who shrugged innocently. Keith laughed so hard he snorted, because as soon as Shiro whispered to him what it meant, Pierce went beet red and declared sword-swallowing sounded like a circus trick and not a sexual act.

“Then that kid is—”

“That’s Pod—A.K.A the only kid that _matters_ ,” Keith said, pointing his finger to the screen. “I say Pod will live to the end.”

“He is pure and good,” Shiro agreed.

“And who’s the satanic bastard?”

“Ramsey?”

“Yes.”

Pierce didn’t expand upon Ramsey at all, and as they fell into silence listening to people screaming and dying, Keith reached over for the popcorn. It was in between Pierce and Shiro, the latter of which sat between them on the futon. Shiro leant back so Keith could snatch the bowl over his lap. It was hard to forget how much Keith’s face felt like an eternal flame, having to stretch across Shiro’s lap like that. 

They’d been friends long enough for Keith to realize that while girls were cool—he didn’t have anything against them—he just thought guys were better. Sure he liked Pierce, but not in a romantic sense. Pierce tended to be corny and watched one too many SNL skits in his lifetime. But then there was the topic of Shiro.

Keith thought he was out of control. Five minutes before each _Game of Thrones_ viewing, he was cleaning the dorm like a madman, making sure everything was in order for them. Somehow within the span of each week, Keith and Cookie managed to demolish the dorm room—clothes everywhere, paper on the floor, notebook on the ceiling (long story), and hell, once Keith found an entire pizza under the futon with no recollection of ever _buying_ one. It wasn’t even the sort you ordered! It was a frozen pizza, thawing and molding under the futon.

And then Keith would lay on the floor until they got to his dorm. Sprawled out like a starfish, Keith would go over his game plan: When he would speak, when he wouldn’t speak, what to explain and when—he couldn’t talk too much otherwise that ruins the _GOT_ experience. He can’t explain every goddamn thing to them otherwise he’d sound like he was obsessed, which he was, but—

And then they’d knock, and Keith would pretend like he wasn’t spiraling out of control when he answered the door. “Hey, you got the popcorn?” he’d say, or sometimes: “You ready for _Game of Thrones_?”

“Hell yeah,” Pierce would say. “I am equipped with popcorn, and I convinced Shiro to break into his stash. Time for _GOT_ -themed drinking games!”

Shiro elbowed Pierce in the stomach, hissing at him to be quiet—alcohol wasn’t allowed in the dorms, since nearly everyone was underaged. Keith raised his eyebrows at them, stepping back to let them in. “What do you have?”

Shiro slid off his backpack, unzipped it, and Keith almost keeled over and died. They were just juice boxes. “I don’t drink,” Shiro confessed, “but I don’t want people thinking _otherwise_ , thanks for that, _Pierce_.”

“What? It’s the truth,” Pierce said, and turned to Keith and explained: “The game is that whenever swords clash we have to drink, and we can’t drink otherwise.”

“God, you _do_ realize we’re watching a war episode today, don’t you?” he said. “We’ll go through, like, six boxes of juice _each_.”

“ _Good_. We’ll need pee breaks. My bladder is the size of a peanut—ha, get it? _Pee_ nut.”

“Jesus Christ, Pierce.”

Throughout the war scene—which was the majority of the hour-long episode—they were constantly chugging juice boxes. Keith gasped for breath after finishing his third and tossed it in the trash. “Pierce was right, I need a pee break.”

“Okay, pause it,” Shiro said. 

“Whaaat you guys are _weak_ ,” Pierce criticized as Keith paused the show and glared at him.

“ _You’re_ the one who said your bladder is the size of a peanut,” he argued, standing up. Shiro stood with him and adjusted his shirt. “ _Don’t_ start it without us,” Keith warned, jabbing his finger in Pierce’s direction before disappearing out the door with Shiro in tow. 

They went to the men’s bathroom on Keith’s floor where, upon entering, Shiro laughed and said: “You know, when I was in middle school, my buddies and I would have a competition.”

“Is it where everyone pees in the same toilet and whoever misses—”

“No, not that one,” Shiro said. “We’d count how long we piss and whoever had the longest time won. I always won.”

“You want to bet on that?” Keith argued, and Shiro’s competitive smirk was enough to confirm it. _I can’t fucking believe I’m having a peeing contest with an elite pilot_ , he mused to himself, trying not to laugh.

Keith didn’t count on beating Shiro, but he just found the whole situation ridiculous. In the end, Shiro did win, and instantly went in for a high five. Keith raised his hands in surrender. “Dude, we just pissed—I’m _not_ high-fiving you.”

“Too bad—we’re washing our hands anyway,” he argued, and slapped Keith’s hand anyway before moving on to the sinks. Keith stared at his hand, half-repulsed, but mostly in shock. 

Could Keith consider that the first time he touched Shiro’s penis? Probably not, but at the time it was revolutionary and completely tipped the scale for Keith.

That night, after they finished the last two episodes of the series, Pierce had to leave because he had work in the morning. Shiro stuck around and suggested they watch a movie. _Just the two of them_. Keith was on the verge of screaming as Shiro recommended a Studio Ghibli film. “No more gore for tonight,” he explained, leaning back on the futon. “I mean, if you’re cool with me hanging out in your room a while longer.”

_Am I ever_. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

He swore Shiro was smiling at him, but Keith was leaning forward so as to avoid seeing. He typed in the movie title on Shiro’s account. “This was my favorite movie as a kid. I cried every time,” Shiro said, and whispered discretely, “It’s so _good_.”

“I can’t believe you,” Keith confessed, laughing. “I mean, animated films are the shit, but honestly, I didn’t peg you as the sort. I was thinking more like _Inception_ and _Marvel_ movies.”

“Don’t get me wrong, those are great too,” Shiro agreed. The lights were off and the movie started, so Keith leaned back and realized that Shiro was positioned in such a way that their shoulders instantly leant against one another, and neither of them moved. _Is he… is he doing that on purpose?_ Keith wondered skeptically, and debated moving away. Because _he_ didn’t want to see like he was overstepping his bounds. _Was_ Shiro even gay? Keith figured he’d never find out.

Keith had never watched a more beautiful film in his life. The entire time it felt like his someone was hugging him around his chest about to perform the heimlich maneuver. He had his knees up to his chest, hands clasped over his stomach. God, his heart was in his throat. It was in his mouth. _Dear God, am I crying?_

At some points in the movie, Keith could hear Shiro saying the lines as the characters said them. When the credits started rolling, Keith discretely sniffed and looked away when Shiro leaned forward to see if he was crying. “Did you cry?”

“No, I didn’t.” Keith’s voice was stuffy.

“You totally did. Here—” Shiro said, causing Keith to turn. Shiro had his sleeve over his hand and rubbed at Keith’s cheek. At the time it seemed like such a huge deal, but in retrospect, it was just… normal. “I take it you liked it.”

“It was a shit movie and I never want to see it again,” Keith said, his sarcasm on the verge of sound genuine. That tended to happen when his emotions scrambled. 

Shiro pulled his hand back a bit and said, sounding heartbroken, “Really?”

Keith’s eyes widened and he instantly exclaimed, “No! No, not really! I was kidding.”

He laughed, dropping his hand and saying, “Oh good. If you didn’t like that movie I was afraid I’d have to stop hanging out with you. I like hanging out with you, but if you hate on _When Marnie Was There_ , that’s where I draw the line.”

Keith laughed nervously, but was at least glad he now had control of himself. If only just a little. “When I was younger, I used to watch it in Japanese,” Shiro explained, leaning back on the futon again. Keith sat so he was partially facing him, his shoulder up against the back cushion. “My parents are both Japanese, but my mom’s originally from America.”

“You’re bilingual?” Keith said, surprised. 

“Trilingual. I learned Spanish in high school, but I’m not that great at it,” he confessed. “I mean, I passed, but not with flying colors.”

“That’s incredible though. Learning a language, I think, is one of the most difficult things to learn,” Keith said. “I had to learn English almost as soon as I got the hang of Korean.”

“Had to?” Shiro asked, and Keith wished he would have phrased it differently.

“I learned Korean first.”

“Why’d you have to learn English then? You don’t even have an accent,” Shiro asked, and Keith shrugged.

“I was really young and when I moved to America I wanted to get rid of my accent. It’s stupid looking back on it, I shouldn’t have been affected by peer pressure when I was in, like, second grade,” he confessed, looking down at his lap and Shiro’s lap, and his hands that were laid casually over his legs. 

“Teach me something,” Shiro said, drawing Keith’s attention up. “Teach me something in Korean.”

  


  


Keith found Shiro late that night still awake, and pacing. He wasn’t sure _why_ he was awake, other than the fact that he couldn’t sleep, and perhaps it was because he knew Shiro wouldn’t be able to sleep. Since that morning, Keith had suddenly become someone he told himself he wouldn’t be anymore. He was getting into the habits he had when he was still in a relationship with Shiro. Perhaps he was jumping the gun here, but it was a bit coincidental that Keith managed to be awake at the same time Shiro was. Back in the day, their sleep cycles synced, and when Shiro would visit family or friends away from the Garrison, neither of them could sleep well.

“What are you doing?” Keith asked groggily, rubbing a hand over his eye as Shiro ceased pacing and turned instantly to face him. Keith’s mind blanked when he saw Shiro’s reddened eyes, and he wasn’t sure what to do. He wasn’t sure how to respond. 

“I-I don’t know,” he confessed, looking down quickly and raising a hand up to tug at his hair. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, eyes flickering to the door at the end of the hall. The one that separated them from the healing pods. “Is this about Pidge? The Holts?”

Shiro was still standing with his hand in his hair, and his metal arm extended as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Keith approached him, knowing that Shiro couldn’t see him until his feet were beside his, and his hand was on Shiro’s metal arm. “I can’t stop think about—about when Matt and I were in the Colosseum. And—and how they treated him—”

“Matt’s safe now,” Keith interrupted, shaking his arm lightly. “He’s not with the Galra anymore. _You_ aren’t. You don’t have to think about it anymore.”

“B-But if I don’t think about it—it will be like they never even hurt us. I don’t _want_ to forget. I don’t _want_ to forget what they _did_ ,” Shiro said, seething in the end. His hand bundled into a fist. “They’ve hurt Pidge too and now—”

“We brought her family back to her,” Keith said, “Sam and Matt won’t let anything happen to Pidge if they can help it. If we can help it.”

Shiro gasped a little, as if laughing, but there were tears in his eyes as he smiled. He shifted to face Keith, and he took it as a sign to move in and wrap his arms around Shiro’s torso, and press his head against Shiro’s shoulder.

For a moment, Shiro didn’t respond, but when he did, Keith felt the intense urge to curse himself for not hugging Shiro before then. He couldn’t believe he never hugged Shiro after saving him from the Garrison. He couldn’t believe he never let himself just admit that he _missed_ Shiro. He missed his protectiveness, his insecurities, his hugs.

Shiro leant his head against Keith’s and they stayed like that for a while as Keith murmured, “It’ll be okay. Pidge will be okay.”

After a while, Shiro’s hand moved up to grip the back of Keith’s neck. His fingers laced through Keith’s hair as he said, “Will we be okay?” 

Keith opened his eyes and stared at the wall ahead of him. His brain jolted alert, thinking, _What does he mean by that? As in, friends? or something more than that? Does he want to go back to how things were before?_

_Do_ I _want things to go back to how they were at the Garrison?_

Instead of asking these panic-induced questions, Keith managed to say, “I think so.” He disentangled himself from Shiro’s arms and glanced down the hall. “I’m going to go check on Pidge before heading back to sleep. Maybe.”

“Mind if I join you?” Shiro asked, starting to follow Keith on the walk to the healing pods. As soon as he said it, Keith’s body temperature felt like it jumped ten degrees. When he looked quizzically at Shiro, he went red and instantly added: “Visiting Pidge I mean.”

“Sure. And I think sharing a bed would be a tight squeeze, at least in my room, so I’m gonna have to pass on that,” Keith teased, and Shiro groaned, running a hand down the side of his face.

“To think you gave up teasing me,” he complained. Keith scoffed, shaking his head as the doors hissed open and they stepped onto the circular walkway around the pods. He glanced at Shiro, who was still pink on the cheeks. 

“Is it appropriate for me to tease the leader of Voltron? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop,” he said, and got a startled, “Keith!” in response. But Keith was already walking away, and hunting down Pidge’s pod among the other injured aliens from the planet’s surface.

He found her pod easily enough, and she happened to be in the average height range among the aliens injured. Her hair was a dead giveaway, though, and without her glasses she looked actually dead. Keith tapped his finger on the pod’s sensor and squinted at the number sequence that popped up.

“Are you sure she’s all right? She looks kind of sickly to me,” Keith said.

“That’s just the blue from the cover,” Shiro told him. “And she’s pale to begin with.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“How can they just stand up in the pod like that? What if Pidge broke a leg or something?” he asked, and as soon as the thought came to him, he started going around and checking the other injured aliens. One of them _had_ broken a leg, so he hunted down that fellow and found him standing as well. He voiced his concern to Shiro.

“Maybe it’s also an anti-gravity chamber?” he suggested. “And they just suspend like that so it looks like they’re standing when they aren’t?”

“I don’t know, that doesn’t seem likely.”

“But in order to heal a broken leg, the leg has to be fixated straight otherwise it will heal incorrectly,” Shiro thought aloud, resting his hand against his chin. Keith bent down to observe the alien’s leg. They were all clothed in simple mid-thigh length undergarments with a tank-top collar, which provided Keith a full view of the alien’s wounded leg. It was swollen, but straight. 

“Perhaps they’re inside a clear, undetectable gelatin chamber that’s a living breathing organism that acts as an inverse parasite,” he suggested.

“I don’t see any distortion of this theoretical gel.”

“Perhaps we should just let the healing pods do their magic.”

Both Shiro and Keith leapt away from the sound of someone in the doorway. They found Coran watching them, dressed in his nightwear and looking amused. Keith swore Coran’s mustache correlated with the man’s emotions, because right now it seemed curlier than usual.

“Sorry for the fright,” Coran said. “I just happened to notice two paladins up and about when they should be _sleeping_.”

“We’re sorry, Coran,” Shiro said. “We were just checking up on Pidge.”

Coran approached them, his hands clasped in front of him as he peered at the subject in the pod. “This doesn’t look like Pidge to me.”

“Obviously,” Keith snorted. “We were just wondering what makes the subjects stand even when they’ve wounded their legs.”

“Ah, I see. The answer is quite simple, really,” Coran declared, and Keith raised his brows, his attentiveness spiking. “And that would have to be… temporary paralysis. Completely harmless.”

“Wouldn’t the muscles have to remain tense to keep the subject up that long?”

“Wouldn’t they collapse?”

“That sounds harmful to me. What if it _isn’t_ temporary? Everyone reacts to medication differently,” Shiro argued, now looking concerned. “Lance was in one of these…”

“And did he turn out all right? That could be up for debate,” Keith said, and earned a scowl from Coran _and_ Shiro.

“Don’t question it,” Coran told them. “Just be thankful it works and it works well. Now, both of you—back to bed.”


	7. [ broken ]

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to stay together. We’re both swamped with work, with me still being in school and exams coming up. You should really just focus on the Kerberos mission since it’s so important to you, and it’s the greatest opportunity you’ve gotten. So I’m not asking you to decide between me or Kerberos—I’ve thought about it and I shouldn’t have made you think that I was against you going. And besides, after you get back, I’ll be at an internship somewhere, or have a job somewhere other than here so… it’s fair to assume we might not even see each other again—ah, for Christ’s sake. ‘Fair to assume’, what am I a lawyer or something?”

Keith probably repeated these same words to himself long enough for them to become numb in his mouth. At first, they meant everything and now… they were just words. And he hated them. There was no proper way to say goodbye to Shiro, call it quits, whatever. Shiro deserved so much better than a half-hearted breakup a week after officially joining the team heading to Kerberos. 

Keith crinkled up the paper in his hands and stared at himself in the mirror and realized that his eyes were getting red. He cussed under his breath and looked down at the sink, gripping the edge of it and wondering how long it’d take for him to get his shit together and just _say it_.

He decided winging it was a terrible, _terrible_ idea. Whenever he did that, he ended up exploding into a million pieces and just upsetting the matter further. He didn’t want their breakup to be devastating. He wanted it to be logical. Rational. And he thought he was those things, but when they first started dating Keith admitted that he was a bit irrational and emotional. He blamed his anxiety on that, but now he was better. He felt better. If Shiro was able to make him a better person, then what did Keith provide him? What did Keith ever do for Shiro?

It was so like Keith to not know the answer to that question. 

But staging a speech wouldn’t do anything for Keith when Shiro had something to say afterwards. How could he plan for Shiro’s reaction when he wasn’t sure what to expect anymore? It was why Keith went for the logical, rational approach—that was Shiro. Shiro would understand that, wouldn’t he?

Besides, it’s not like Shiro would ever try to argue Keith out of something like this. Keith had to believe that Shiro would understanding his reasoning, and that it would be enough. 

Keith rubbed the heel of his palm over his eye once more before starting to recite it all again, only to be interrupted by a knock on the front door, and the handle turning. Instantly Keith rushed to the bathroom door and shut it, and locked it. 

There wasn’t much noise on the other side of the door, but maybe that’s because Keith’s rapidly beating heart was masking it. He braced his hands over his chest and tried to pace his breathing. Dear God he didn’t want to feel like this again. It’d been years since he felt like this and it was suffocating him and he couldn’t breathe and—

“Keith?” Shiro’s voice was on the other side of the door, knocking gently on the wood. “Are you all right?”

Keith had the words right on the tip of his tongue, something like, “Yeah, I’m just taking a piss,” but it didn’t come out. They lodged in his throat like the air he was trying to take in. His hand scrambled to hold onto the sink, dropping the words he wanted to say on the floor. 

“Keith,” Shiro repeated, this time urgent, knocking again. Everything was conflicting—he was just preparing to break up with Shiro and now he wants to seek comfort in him? How will he be able to do this? He can’t do this, he can’t break up with Shiro if he can’t _get his shit together_ —

Still, he went to the door and fumble with the lock until his shaking hands finally managed to unlock it. Keith stepped away, gasping as if he just ran ten miles and suddenly feeling all the moisture on his cheeks and how puffy he felt from crying unknowingly. 

The door opened slowly, and Keith tried unsuccessfully to breathe again. It was crippling and hot and devastating all at once, and when he saw the look on Shiro’s face, seeing him like this, it sent Keith to his knees sobbing. 

“Hey, hey, it’s just me,” Shiro said, opening the door fully and stepping into the bathroom. He got down on his knees in front of Keith, and it wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t the first time Shiro had to hold Keith’s shaking hands and coach him to lift, and expel each breath. “How long have you been here like this?” he asked as soon as Keith was able.

“J-Just when you came th-through the door,” Keith said, breath hitching at the start of words. “I-I was thinking a-and—I can’t say it. I can’t say it,” he gasped, shaking his head.

He pulled one of his hands free to point to the paper on the ground, the one he bunched up after reciting the words he thought he’d tell Shiro. 

Shiro looked at the paper and didn’t move towards it. He stared at it, and back at Keith before rubbing a hand over his eyes. He seemed to sigh, but it was shaky and condensed, like how his shoulders were pushed up to his neck and he was trying to convince himself that what was on the paper _wasn’t_ a breakup letter.

“I-I can wait until you can say it,” Shiro said.

“ _No_ ,” Keith pressed. “Read it _now_. I-I can’t say it.”

Shiro held Keith’s other hand as he reached over and flattened out the paper on his lap. He sniffed, pushing the back of his hand under his eyes. Hardly a second into it, he muttered, “ _Fuck_ , Keith…” under his breath. 

After a moment, Shiro read it out loud, and voice uneven and wavering until the end, when he finished with, “‘might not even see each other again, and I love you too much to deny you the happiness someone else might offer you without compromising the future you spent your entire life working towards. I’m sorry it has to be this way, and I wouldn’t take back a day of our relationship… no matter how annoyed you get when I tease you and argue with you. I do it because I love you.’

“Is this what you want?” Shiro asked after a moment. He didn’t sound opposing or argumentative. He just wanted to know.

Somehow Keith found the strength to stare him in the eyes and say, “It is. Is that okay?”

At this Shiro, already red and splotchy in the face, burst into tears and pulled Keith towards him for a hug. “Is it okay? Keith, you don’t have to ask if it’s okay,” he said, laughing a little but mostly it sounded like he was sobbing against Keith’s hair. Keith tucked his head against Shiro’s shoulder and shut his eyes.

“If you don’t want to stay together, that’s perfectly justifiable. A-And I’ll be okay with it. Only if you’ll be,” Shiro said, rubbing his hand up and down Keith’s back. Keith tightened his grip around Shiro’s abdomen and nodded, because he was so thankful that he could finally breathe again.

  


  


“You were right to break us off,” Shiro was saying, from where he laid an arm’s reach away from Keith on the floor. They were in one of the castle’s many rooms, one that Lance actually discovered a while back when searching for hiding places away from Coran’s list of chores. It was a narrow room, but with tall, looming, modern pillars all converging at a flat, black surface far above their heads. When people were in the room, it showed footage of nearby nebulas, planets, on a constant stream of galactic wonders.

Keith craned his head back to look at Shiro. He could see the tuft of white hair sprouting above his forehead, but not the expression beyond it. “What makes you say that?” Keith asks. 

“I mean, we never expected to be out here so far away from Earth—I’m sure you never expected to leave Earth so soon,” he explained, and shrugged. “You were right. We probably would have never seen each other again, unless we made an effort to visit each other. That’s no way to spend a life with your significant other. Constantly away from one another.”

Keith sighed and said nothing. He was anxious about Coran coming in and finding them talking about the past like this, but after wandering the halls for a while, they determined that Coran probably didn’t _really_ care whether or not they were still awake. For all they knew, Coran came to check up on Pidge too and played it off as wanting to corral up the paladins for “sleepy-time”.

“Mr. Holt and Matt know about me,” Keith threw out there, and when Shiro didn’t deny it, he said, “How much do they know?”

“They know we broke up,” Shiro said. “How long we were together. I didn’t give them details. Mr. Holt’s a relatively… traditional guy.”

“Huh,” Keith mused aloud. “You think he’ll be cool about Pidge?”

“I think so. He’s very fond of his daughter. I don’t think that will change based on how his daughter dresses,” Shiro explained. “He was so proud that she was accepted into the Garrison—he found out on the way to Kerberos. I remember because we had a stash of food that was considered ‘off limits except for birthdays’ and we cracked into that to celebrate.”

Keith laughed lightly, and sighed. “That sounds nice. Better than goo every day.”

“I don’t know. Hunk can cook a mean slime.” After a second, Keith looked back at Shiro and laughed, and then they were both laughing over it.

They laid in silence after that, and Keith wished he had some music on him. His phone died a long time ago, and even when Hunk and Pidge managed to make an equivalent charger, he never used it. He did miss music though.

Obviously, Shiro didn’t have his cell phone with him. 

As Keith was thinking about what the Galra would have done with a cell phone—they _definitely_ could have used it to their advantage—Shiro was thinking of something else, and brought it up with the sound of a smile in his voice:

“Do you remember, that time I showed you _When Marnie Was There_ for the first time?”

“Yes. That was the first time I had a guy stay over in my dorm,” Keith answered.

“It wasn’t my fault we both fell asleep!” Shiro said, and paused for a moment. “Well, half of it was my fault, the other half was on you. But you only had two pillows on your bunk and didn’t want to use Cookie’s, so we used your comforter, too. It was completely platonic and all but… I really miss being able to have spontaneous slumber parties like that and not be pegged as either a child or a starved college student.” 

Keith was on his stomach now, his chin resting on his hands listening to Shiro talk and bring back the memory of the event. It was one of the events Keith tried to forget because he was embarrassed to admit that after falling asleep, Keith had woken up and realized Shiro was still there. It was the perfect opportunity to unabashedly stare at Shiro, and Keith took it, and looking back on it… that was such a stalker move. Either that, or the sort of tactic a hormonal college student would use.

“I think I’ve told you before that that night I realized I really liked you,” Shiro said, now turning his head back to look at Keith. They blinked at one another before Shiro continued. “And I felt like a piece of shit for having spent the night in your room because of it. I didn’t want you to think I was a creepy upperclassmen going for an ignorant, inexperienced freshmen.”

They had that conversation before, but Keith couldn’t help but use the same argument again. “Are you kidding? You _know_ I was obsessed with you by that point. Like—if I could have had a poster of you, I would have put it on my wall.”

Shiro snorted and burst into laughter. “You were not! You acted completely aloof, trust me. I should know, considering you didn’t react to _any_ of my courting. I don’t care what you say—the only times I was certain you liked me was when you didn’t yank your hand away when we held hands or when we kissed and you were totally into it.”

“God—don’t talk about it like that,” Keith chuckled, covering his mouth with his hand. “‘ _Totally into it.’_ What are we, in high school?”

“Only if we end up sleeping in here tonight, like a _real_ slumber party,” Shiro said, raising his eyebrows. Keith knew that look. He was insinuating a challenge. 

Keith nearly agreed to it, but then remembered what Keith’s first night with Shiro led to. Watching Studio Ghibli, followed by a night staring at Shiro sleeping was a recipe for romance, which also meant this would be too. And the way Shiro’s excitement dropped told Keith that his own countenance betrayed his thoughts. 

“I would, but sleeping on an actual mattress is kind of nice,” Keith said, and pushed his hands against the ground, rising up into a sitting position. He sat there for a moment and sighed, glancing up at the starburst over their heads. It was so peaceful and serene that Keith’s thoughts flowed with ease, and he felt like he could say whatever was on his mind. So he did. “Did you have a list?”

Shiro was now sitting across from him. “A list for what?”

“Of all the reasons you stayed in a relationship with me,” Keith explained. The question must not have been on Shiro’s radar, because he answered with a look of surprise. Keith’s cheeks flamed red. “I mean, if you didn’t, that’s fine. It was just on my mind.”

“You had one for me, didn’t you?” Shiro asked, and Keith nodded. “That sounds like something you’d do. And yes, I had a list.” The shock must have been imminent on Keith’s face, because Shiro laughed a little and explained: “I spent a lot of time in a cell. And a lot of time thinking about Earth, and thinking about you.”

“What were your top three reasons?” Keith asked. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

Shiro was still smiling as he stared down at his lap and ticked them off his mechanical fingers. “Number three was: Having someone to make coffee for, and number two was: Brings up bizarre, unrelated topics I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, and number one was: Having someone to pamper with surplus snuggle sessions.”

“Holy shit,” Keith exclaimed. “Your number one is my number two!”

“Really?” Shiro laughed. “What are the rest?”

“Number three was: Protects The People He Loves, and number two: Introducing Me To The World Of Snuggling, and number one: The Epitome Of Support, which really is just a fancy way of saying that you… were the only person I depended on with things I would have just kept to myself.” Like studying for organic chemistry when he was a freshmen, like helping Keith when he was in the midst of panic attacks, like the sort of person Keith could stand to live with.

The sort of person he could stand to be in a relationship with.

Shiro’s eyes were watchful and calm, his smile faint but still apparent. “It seems that last bit has shifted,” he commented. “As far as I know, you haven’t had a panic attack since Voltron happened.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Keith said, twisting his fingers together as he added, “It doesn’t make you weak, to break down once in a while. You told me that.”

“I did, and I still stand by it,” he affirmed, and started to rise. Keith followed suit, and the second he did the weight of the day pressed on him. He yawned and felt at ease again. “We should actually get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”

Keith groaned, leading the way out of the room as he muttered, “ _Joy_.”


	8. [ together ]

“Do you ever leave campus? Except to buy shoes?” Shiro was asking Keith. They happened to cross paths briefly between classes in the second semester that year, so they walked for a ways together when Shiro brought this up.

“Why would I need to leave campus?” Keith asked gruffly, giving Shiro a sour look. He knew he was purposefully critiquing Keith’s lifestyle, but it still bothered him.

“It’s just that… I dunno, maybe you should go out to the town this weekend. With me, and a few other guys. I say ‘guys’ loosely, otherwise Mer would break a table in two with her teeth.”

“A few other comrades.”

“Associates.”

“ _Friends_. Let’s just go with friends,” Keith offered. “And I think I’ll pass.” Mainly because, while he appreciated Shiro’s friends, he could only handle so many of them at once. At first, just hanging with Shiro, Pierce, and Meredith was a struggle. Keith’s small social bubble was expanding.

Shiro groaned, and they were approaching the spot where they would part ways. He stepped in front of Keith before he could make his getaway and put a hand to Keith’s shoulder. “What if I told you we go with the group, and then split up? They were planning on going to a sushi place in town, but we could do something else.”

“Like what?” Keith asked, and pursed his lips as Shiro thought rapidly for an answer. He started to sidestep Shiro, only to be stopped again by his hand on his shoulder. 

“Like junkyard spelunking,” Shiro threw out there. At this Keith raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, there’s a plot of land way out from the town we could hike to and dig around for broken vehicles we could fix up.”

Keith was still staring at him until Shiro blurted out, “What? You don’t like that idea?”

“I just wasn’t expecting it. That isn’t exactly ‘going out on the town’ kind of talk,” he argued, and Shiro groaned in response.

“Are we going or what? The guys and I—again, ‘guys’ used loosely—once pieced together a dune buggy. It still works, I could show it to you,” Shiro explained, and Keith was instantly all about the idea. 

“ _Seriously_? That’s incredible! When are we going?”

Keith had to wait until the weekend. It was Tuesday. 

He was so ecstatic leading up to that day and at one point, he thought he made himself sick thinking about it so much. After spending so much time with Shiro, he started to wondering if it was even _possible_ to _still_ be obsessed with the guy. Keith learned details that would usually turn someone off—like the fact that Shiro had the nerdiest collection of chemical bond magnets, or that he limited his showers to two-and-a-half times a week. Keith showered _every goddamn day_. 

But then again, Shiro _had_ recommended just the two of them sneak off. Was that an innuendo? Shiro from the present was right: Keith _had_ been an ignorant, inexperienced freshmen trying to make sense of the college life. 

Of course, that didn’t stop Keith from _going_ anyway with the subtle hope that Shiro would suddenly confess that he, too, was head-over-heels for Keith. As soon as the thought came up, Keith banished it with the feeling of nausea. Who just _thought those kinds of things?_

When the day came, Keith realized he had little else to wear except for his Garrison uniforms. Sure, he had a few stray things here and there from before he came to the Garrison, and for sleepwear, but he couldn’t wear plaid pajama pants to hang out with Shiro out in a junkyard. He pulled on a pair of black jeans and a grey t-shirt—boring, but safe for rifling around through broken down cars. 

It was early spring, which meant that the afternoons got a bit chilly so he pulled on his spare jacket—a red athletic coat with white Adidas stripes down the length of the arms. _Casual?_ Keith mused, observing himself in the mirror, thankful that Cookie wasn’t there to see him _worrying_ about his _outfit_. 

He met Shiro out by the gate for the bus. Their friends were there as well, talking ludicrously loud about electromagnetic theory, which led to a debate on a magnetic pole shift completely demolishing every device powered by electricity. “That’s the only apocalypse I’m calling for—I don’t care what you say, _Pierce_ , the zombie apocalypse _won’t. happen._ ”

“Maybe not in our time!” Pierce shouted, throwing his arms up. “But an magnetic pole shift?! Geological records _prove_ that it’s happened before, _repeatedly_ , and we’re due for another, so _that_ might happen in our time. And in the chaos and confusion a zombie virus could spread like wildfire…”

“But airplanes won’t work,” Shiro commented. “Which would mean it wouldn’t spread _as_ fast unless it’s an airborne virus to begin with.”

“ _Please_ tell me you aren’t agreeing with the zombie apocalypse theory,” Keith complained, and Meredith agreed.

“It’s unrealistic. A more advanced Black Plague theory is better founded,” she explained, “instead of introducing an entirely new, unforeseen virus that prompts widespread _cannibalism_.”

“It’s more complicated than that!” Pierce cried out, sounding dramatically offended. Keith stifled a laugh behind his hand, and was instantly targeted. “Don’t laugh at the truth!” 

“I seriously wasn’t,” Keith said, still smiling even as Pierce glared at him.

The bus approached and as they all paid the fare before taking seats sporadically around the bus. It was relatively full, so Keith stood with a hand clasped on the bar over his head. Shiro stood next to him, giving the last seat to Meredith. The argument about the impending apocalypse was still going on, and Keith could hear Pierce panicking in the back about having to start a safety shelter in the basement of the Garrison. 

“I think I’d survive the zombie apocalypse,” Keith confessed.

“Really?” Shiro said, and Keith glared in response. “I didn’t mean that as a diss on your fighting skills. But I just never really thought about it.”

“About my fighting skills?”

“That, and whether or not I would survive the zombie apocalypse,” he confessed, raising a hand to his chin. “I think you’d survive. I would probably end up getting myself killed over something stupid.”

“Or heroic,” Keith offered, and Shiro laughed at the idea. “I’m serious. I feel like you’d end up sacrificing yourself or some shit like that.”

He hummed thoughtfully, and seemed to be staring at the top of Keith’s head as he did so. “Well… you aren’t wrong.”

“Told you,” Keith countered with a smirk, turning his attention away and out the window.

When their stop came, their group stepped off onto the curb and walked a ways before Shiro and Keith divided from everyone else. Keith waved goodbye to Pierce and Meredith before sticking his hands into his pockets and looking to Shiro. “Okay, which way?” he asked.

Shiro explained the route they would take out beyond the neighborhoods. There was a campsite nearby that they crossed through, weaving in between RVs and trucks before stepping out onto the dusty orange desert surface. 

There were gnarled looking trees around the campsite and further out into the desert, but after a while they disappeared. Shiro was explaining how the campsite hired a lot of college students to work over the summer and in the busier months, and because he, and a few others, worked there a summer back, the owner let them stash the dune buggy in the back building. 

“I think he was hoping we’d come back this summer, but I have an internship with the Garrison, and Pierce is going out of state,” Shiro explained, and unclipped the keys on his belt.

A gust of wind came through and Keith held the sleeve of his jacket up to his eyes to avoid getting sand in them. Shiro was kneeling in front of the garage door, unlocking it, and shoving it up. It groaned the entire way, and creaked overhead, but as it rose they were given a perfect view of the dune buggy Shiro and his friends built. 

It had a sleek black metal frame that caged in the two seats, and guarded the engine in the back. The tires were heavy-duty, and the flanked a set of headlights in the front. The tires in the back were twice the width and height of the front ones, and as Keith circled the vehicle, his excitement from before was entirely justified. This was _incredible_.

“I’ve always wanted to build a buggy,” he confessed, leaning his hands on the back tire as Shiro held himself up against the upper part of the frame.

“Really?”

“Yeah, but I was never able to,” Keith said. “Not enough space for it, or nowhere to ride it.”

“Did you live in the suburbs or something?”

“Or something,” he answered. He pat his hands on the tire and said, “Are we going or what?” Shiro grinned at him and gestured for Keith to enter the vehicle. 

He ducked down and dropped into the passenger’s seat. Shiro tossed him a pair of goggles and a helmet, which he caught and strapped on. Shiro followed suit, swinging underneath the frame of the buggy and dropping into the driver’s seat. He started up the engine, and as it roared to life, Keith couldn’t stop the massive grin from taking over his mouth.

Shiro shouted for him to buckle up before he put the buggy into drive and rolled out of the garage. Once they were off the concrete, he gunned it and Keith shouted, throwing his arms up and grabbing onto the frame.

The ride to the junkyard couldn’t be considered smooth, but it was thrilling and incredible all at the same time. Just for the hell of it, Shiro spun the buggy around in donuts that sent Keith into hysterical laughter, trying to hang on without slamming straight into Shiro’s side. They cruised over hills that sent them flying a foot into the air before crashing back down again. Shiro mastered the art of driving this thing. 

He swung the buggy around the edge of a boulder and sent the tail flying around. Keith was screaming the entire way until suddenly they came to a halt, and Keith realized that Shiro had parked the damn thing perfectly behind the rocky hill.

“Let’s hope no one steals it,” Shiro said, cranking off his helmet and setting it on the seat. Keith did the same, and as soon as he did Shiro started laughing. “Your hair—it’s all over the place!”

“Really? It’s not even that long,” Keith complained, patting his hands over his head. Shiro grabbed him by the arm and urged him to get out of the buggy, and that his hair looked fine.

Shiro’s hand nearly wrapped around the entirety of Keith’s wrist, at least where it was skinniest. He held on until Keith was completely on his feet, and after a moment let go and pointed ahead of them, where they were sandwiched between two rocky inclines. “It’s just on the other side here. Not too far.”

They jogged to the edge of the hill and stepped around the rock face. Shiro was right, it wasn’t far. In fact, it was no more than twenty feet away, with heavy-duty fencing with wooden panels sandwiching a wire mesh in between. As they got closer, Keith realized that there were spikes looped over the top. “There’s a section over here where the wire’s gone—someone took it out before we even found it,” Shiro explained, so they walked a ways to find the opening. 

As they arrived at it, Shiro got down on one knee and cupped his hands. “You go up first.”

“No way—how else are you gonna get up?” Keith demanded.

“I’ve done this before, trust me,” Shiro countered instantly, his stare challenging until Keith rolled his eyes. He put a hand on the fence to steady himself before slipping his foot onto Shiro’s hands. 

All at once Keith was raised up off the ground, and he grabbed for the edge of the fence before hoisting himself up. His foot left Shiro’s palm to brace the edge of the fence. Keith swung his feet over, hands still steadying on the board. He looked down at Shiro, who stood up and stared at him. “You sure you can make it over?” Keith asked.

“What, you don’t trust me?” he argued, placing his hands on his hips. “Now move out of the way before I ram straight into you.”

Keith lowered himself down and dropped his feet onto the ground. The impact was heavy and sent him staggering a few paces away, just in time to see Shiro’s hands come up and grasp the edge of the fence. A moment later, he raised himself up with a huff and rolled onto the other side of the fence. He landed just as hard before brushing off his hands on his trousers. 

“Perks of being taller than you,” Shiro said, grinning as he passed Keith and left him stunned. 

After a minute the subtle insult registered, and Keith turned on his heals and argued, “I’m not _that_ much shorter! I could have jumped that high if I wanted to!”

“I’m not saying you couldn’t have! It’s called being a _gentlemen_ ,” Shiro argued. Before Keith had the chance to turn into a flustering puddle of mush, he continued, “Look—you can see the car parts over there.”

Shiro pointed across a mound of appliances to where Keith could see the edge of a crane. It wasn’t function at the moment, but it was the sort junkyards used to transport large objects like cars to be crushed and sent elsewhere.

“You got all of the parts here?” Keith asked, and Shiro gave an iffy shrug.

“Well, _most_ of them. Engines are hard to come by if you don’t really know what you’re doing. We couldn’t afford to fix up a damaged one. We were lucky to even come across a functioning gas tank,” he explained, scuffing his feet alongside Keith. They walked between the mounds of junk and metal and shrugged. “Not many of us were auto guys—so really, it was just our one friend Matthew, because he used to build those things with his dad, and then I was doing research all summer to try and help out. I’ve never learned so much about race cars and dune buggies in such a short period of time, if I’m being completely honest.”

“Race cars?” Keith repeated. “What about—wait, let me look it up. I forgot the name for it.” He took out his phone and started searching around for it as he explained. “I’m in a class on aerospace engineering and I have Professor Harris for the class, so one tangent led to another and we were talking about these last week.”

Keith held his screen over for Shiro to see, and he watched as the man squinted at it and gave Keith a funny look. “A hovercraft?”

“Not just _any_ hovercraft,” Keith said. “One that’s able to form an air pocket that could potentially have a max altitude of, like, five feet.”

Shiro laughed, shaking his head. “Come on, you’re kidding, right? You know how much pressure the fans would have to give off? Hovercrafts _rarely_ exceed a few inches off the ground.”

“I know, that’s why I asked Harris about it, and she said that the Garrison has spare fittings from a failed attempt last year. She said I could take it and get extra credit for building a working model.”

“Extra credit?” The way Shiro said it made Keith wonder if he practically overheard Keith’s conversation with Professor Harris.

“Fine, she said I could pass the class without having to take the exam if I could build it. Originally everyone builds a small model at the end of the class and then takes an exam, but I wouldn’t have to do that if I got this thing to work,” Keith confessed, stuffing his hands in his pockets and shrugging. “And when you suggested the junkyard I figured I could see if it’s even possible.”

Finally, Keith looked up at Shiro and was surprised to find him looking… impressed. “Do you know anything about putting this thing together?” Shiro asked, and Keith shrugged again.

“I used to be in autos in high school, and Harris said she’d help with the blueprints after I figure out the overall design. So I think I could do it,” he said, and inside he felt the pressure building, and that feeling he got when the excitement was about to carry him off into the atmosphere.

Shiro’s uncertainty turned to a full-blown smile as he said, “Then I’ll help you with it. Let’s look around and get an idea of what we’re working with.”

Since Keith didn’t have a solid blueprint down, they planned for another spelunking adventure, one that included a blueprint map of the design that he drew up with the help of Professor Harris nearly a month later. They went several times before then, taking pictures and uncovering gems from beneath the wreckage. Between that and the parts Professor Harris provided, they recruited the help of some of Shiro’s friends when they weren’t stressing over midterms.

But before then, before they were even able to start transporting the parts, Keith found himself stand beside Shiro staring at a rundown, rusty metal race car partly hidden behind a tire and a Toyota doorframe. It was dusk, around the time they usually came out to the junkyard, and for a moment Shiro tilted his head to read what was painted on the side. When he leaned and bumped his shoulder against Keith and kept it there.

“Zero… One?” Shiro read, and glanced over to Keith. He tilted his head to read it before looking at Shiro. Their faces were incredibly close, and the height difference put Keith’s eyes level with Shiro’s nose. 

“We could paint over it,” Keith suggested.

“Or keep it,” he said, and stepped forward, leaving a cold spot on Keith’s arm where he was leaning. 

Shiro went over and pushed aside the tire and yanked at the edge of the metal piece. Keith wasn’t entirely sure _what_ the part was from—it almost looked like it had been apart of a aircraft before Keith put the imagine in his head to apply it to his hovercraft. Shiro stepped behind it and heaved it out of the trash pile. “Think about it—you _could_ paint it red.”

“I was thinking white, honestly,” Keith confessed.

“But white gets dirty easily. Do you ever wear a white dress shirt to a dinner?” Shiro argued, and Keith shrugged because he was sure he had at least once. “My point is: we’re in the desert. It’s gonna get dirt on it no matter what.”

“What if it’s mostly red, and then a little accent of white?” Keith suggested, reaching out his arm. “Like this?”

“No stripes.”

“Fine, no stripes.”

“And we keep the Zero One?”

“How come you’re making all the decisions for this?” Keith complained, amusement in his expression as he came to grab the part, attempting to take it away. “My hovercraft, my rules.”

Shiro stared him down, and Keith stared right back. He yanked at the piece again, but Shiro refused to let go, and ended up just pulling him closer. Keith pursed his lips, trying to stay angry but _damn_ why were they standing so close to each other? And he wasn’t moving away from Keith. 

At that point, they’d spent so much time around each other that it was starting to register that Shiro didn’t mind being close to Keith. If their legs bumped, he didn’t pull away with a “Oops, sorry.” Or if their hands happened to touch while walking beside each other—Keith swore one time their fingers locked for a _split second_ and it was _the_ _greatest thing_. 

“I really think you should keep the zero one,” Shiro insisted, his voice a dangerous whisper he dared Keith to object to.

Which he did. He leaned closer, narrowing his eyes as he said, “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want.”

For a moment, he didn’t pull away, and perhaps that was because Shiro had that look on his face, like he had something on his mind. “If you have something to say to me, you damn well better,” Keith remarked.

“So if you wanted to, you could kiss me right now?” That question definitely had not been on Keith’s radar, and it threw him for such a loop that his taunting anger vanished all at once. He felt that gripping jump of adrenaline shoot through his veins, and wondered if he could suck in enough air to just _say something_.

Keith swallowed hard, and realized too late that he took too much time to answer. Shiro’s face went red in an instant, and instantly Keith’s mind leapt to the conclusion he’d been wondering about for so long: _Did_ Shiro like him as more than a friend? _Yes_. This confirmed that question.

“That was—” Shiro started, stepping back from the metal barrier. He looked so horrified with himself that Keith did all he could to reach across the barrier and grab Shiro by the shirt. It was so aggressive it must have looked like Keith was preparing to hit him because Shiro flinched away.

What was Keith doing.

Keith didn’t know how to _kiss someone_.

So when their lips collided, it was just that. He crushed his mouth against Shiro’s and that was it—and it only lasted for the second it took for both of them to lose their shit. 

“Holy—”

“Fuck,” Keith finished, dropping the metal sheet to slap his hand over his mouth. 

Shiro hopped out of the way, farther back from Keith to avoid having his feet crushed. Keith staggered back, wondering if he should be horrified or thrilled. It rattled to the ground and the silence expanded between them before bursting at the exact moment Keith pointed to him, shouting, “You asked me to!”

“Did you even _want_ to?”

“I—” _Is that a trick question?_ Keith stopped himself. “Maybe!”

“It’s a simple question: yes or no?” Shiro demanded, and the words shoved a knife into Keith’s throat and cut off his breath. He didn’t know what Shiro wanted—was he _looking_ for a confession? He had to be, otherwise why would he have become so comfortable standing close, walking together, sitting together—staying _over in Keith’s dorm for movie nights?!_

Keith shoved the heel of his palms against his chest, trying to get his breath back as he shouted, “Yes, okay! Christ—” _I can’t fucking breathe_.

If Keith would have been in a better state, he would have seen Shiro let out a sigh of relief and grip his own chest before realizing that something was wrong. Keith started wheezing, and coughed as a bout of tears forced its way through his tear ducts.

“Keith— Keith, what’s wrong? It’s fine, I’m okay with it—I’m sorry for freaking you out,” Shiro started as Keith doubled over, a hand to his knee and the other wanting to tear the fabric of his shirt right off of him.

Between manic breaths, he spat, “I-I’m—having—a _panic attack—_ you piece of—”

 _God_ , it felt like the world was collapsing on him, and it wasn’t until something started tugging at his hand that Keith became somewhat aware of his surroundings, and the fact that Shiro was trying to pull his arm off.

He slapped Shiro away and snapped, “Don’t touch me!”

“I’m trying to help—please, it’ll be okay,” Shiro was saying, and it wasn’t until Keith heard those words aloud for the first time that he realized how much he _hated them_. That was the _last thing_ he wanted to hear when everything was obviously _not_ okay.

He must have said “ _Shut the fuck up_ ” or something that seriously put Shiro off, because he stepped fully away from Keith and let him break down for another five minutes. Eventually Keith was on the ground, his breathing jagged and terrifying to feel cutting through his lungs with every intake.

It was completely dark out now, so he couldn’t even tell where Shiro was based on his shadow. When he looked up, he half expected to find him gone. He wasn’t sure _why_ he expected Shiro to ditch him, but it was startling to see him standing there. 

Keith settled back on his heels, and felt uneasy with each breath. “I… I’m n-not sure how you f-feel about me. And I f-feel like shit for bringing th-this up now. You don’t h-have to feel obligated t-to—to—” he stopped because he couldn’t even finish a goddamn sentence.

“ _Obligated_?” Shiro repeated, and the word seemed so stark coming out of his mouth. He dropped to his knees in front of Keith, looking petrified. “Obligated? Keith, it’s okay to break down once in a while. It’s not a deciding factor at all—it doesn’t make me like you any less.”

Keith sniffed and rubbed the sleeve of his jacket over his eyes. Shiro shuffled closer until their knees were touching, and he reached out his arms hesitantly. “Can I?” he asked, gesturing for a hug.

“Sure,” he answered, and let Shiro envelope him in his arms. He let his head fall under Shiro’s chin, and tried to even his breathing. After a while, the comfort of no longer having that weight on his shoulders finally sank in, and Keith felt content. 

Shiro had his chin pressed against the top of Keith’s head, and after a while, when Keith’s breathing was back to normal, he pulled his head to the side, signaling for Keith to look at him. “Are we okay?” Shiro asked him.

Keith snickered a little, wondering how it was possible to be snarky now but went for it anyways. “Are you asking me out?”

Shiro, surprisingly, laughed, his smile brightening. “I’d say so, yes,” he answered.

For a moment Keith was able to just stare at Shiro, and be entirely certain that this wasn’t one-sided. He wondered how long it’d been this way. “Then sure. We’re okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point I'm going to add anxiety trigger warnings to the tags--I think it's fair to assume that a lot of people suffer with anxiety and panic attacks and I don't want to cause any trouble with that. I personally don't suffer from panic attacks, but if there's a specific way you'd like me to go about describing them, message me or comment or something. I'd really like Keith's mental state to be as accurate as possible.
> 
> That said, I know Shiro's reaction isn't the appropriate one--to just step back and let Keith deal with it himself. I'll bring it up later, but he honestly didn't know what to do in the situation. Shiro will be better later on.


	9. [ in harmony ]

The following morning, Keith found himself back in the healing pod chamber accompanied by the rest of the team, and the Holts. Matt lingered around Allura at the control panel in the center of the room, and Lance was peering into Pidge’s healing pod, hands poised as if prepared to tap the glass repeatedly. 

“Is this what it was like when I was in the pod?” Lance asked. “Are you sure she’s breathing?”

“Yes, Lance, I am sure,” Allura replied monotonously from the side. “Just give it a few more ticks.”

“What _is_ a tick anyway?” Lance asked.

“Dear God.”

“Pidge’s stopwatch isn’t around here!” Hunk cried. “We can’t compare ticks and seconds!”

“ _Oh_ , the clock party, I remember now,” Lance exclaimed, clapping his hands. “But I missed the final decision. What was it?”

“Ticks are bigger,” Allura replied, not looking up from her workspace.

Keith glared at Lance the second he got that ridiculous, suggestive look on his face. “Well in that case, my tick is—”

“ _Lance_ ,” Shiro warned, and Keith half expected him to smack Lance upside the head, and by the way Lance cowered, he expected it too.

Matt was dressed in Altean garments that looked like medieval apparel jumped straight to the futuristic age. The waist on his pants was high, and his shirt tucked in, and Hunk even commented on whether or not high-waisted pants were comfortable. “They surprisingly are,” was Matt’s response. “They aren’t jeans, but they aren’t sweatpants either.” They tucked into a pair of boots, and a jacket covered his arms. 

His father was in similar clothes that sided with Coran’s uniform. His jacket didn’t have as extreme of a collar, though, and Keith couldn’t see much of the front considering the man had been standing in front of Pidge’s pod since they entered the room.

“So how do you access the computer here?” Matt asked Allura, pointing to the glowing panel at their fingertips. “I saw you walk up to it and it responded automatically. But if any of us walk to it, it doesn’t seem to do a thing.”

“The castle is connected to my life source,” she answered calmly. “It’s been a part of me since I was young. You earthlings have a phrase that fits well… a sixth sense?” 

“Can Coran access the computers like you can?” he asked.

“Yes, but some things he cannot access. Such as wormhole jumps.”

“Would I be able to access them?” he asked, and at Allura’s hesitance, he frowned and said, “Princess, I can’t help but thinking that if the castle is linked to your life-force, if you happened to… be abducted by the Galra or worse, killed, how would the castle function without you? We would be stranded.”

Matt’s question summoned the attention of everyone in the room. Keith raised his eyebrows and glanced at Hunk, who stood nearby. The big man looked nervous, to say the least. If Keith was being honest with himself, he’d admit that the question _had_ come to mind, especially when Allura was taken to Zarkon’s central command a year ago. 

Allura’s fingers froze over the control panel and she looked up at Matt, who instantly went red and backed away a bit. “I’m sorry—I overstepped my bounds.”

“It’s a valid question,” she answered, and didn’t expand on it. Keith quirked a brow and folded his arms over his chest, stealing a look over to Shiro who looked just as perplexed. He seriously wanted an answer to that, but didn’t plan on fighting the Princess over it.

A bout of awkward silence followed as Matt, looking a bit horrified with himself, went over to his father. Not even halfway there, though, a hiss erupted from the healing pod. 

A cloud of smoke passed, and emitted the warmth that had been contained inside the pod. Keith felt it when he stepped over to see Pidge clearly as she groaned and took a wobbly step out of the pod. Mr. Holt raised his hands up to one of hers and helped ease her out of the pod. “Why does my head feel like I was stuck in Blue while Lance flew around like a maniac?” she complained, holding her free hand to her head.

“ _Seriously_?” Lance whined. “You break out of a coma and _that’s_ the first thing you say?”

“It’s good to see you up, is what he meant to say,” Shiro said, shoving Lance back from fighting Pidge.

She laughed, her squinty eyes opening a bit and registering that someone was holding her hand. She looked up her arm and let out a shriek, awake and excited instantly by the sight of her father. “You’re alive! But the—the collapse?” she shouted, lunging for him and hooking her arms around his neck. 

Mr. Holt laughed, tucking his head against Pidge’s shoulder. “We’re fine, we’re fine,” he said. Keith looked away because he knew that they were crying, and Matt was crying, and Hunk was tearing up. He didn’t want it to become contagious, but he could already feel the tightened feeling in the back of his throat. That didn’t mean he cried, though.

Keith looked over at where Allura still stood at her console, and how she smiled at the Holts before turning her gaze down to her hands. There was more than one occasion in the past where it became prevalent that while Allura’s family was gone forever, Pidge still had hers. They were just missing.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Mr. Holt said, pulling back and pushing his fingers underneath his glasses to brush away tears.

Pidge’s feet touched the ground again, and instantly Matt had her in his arms. “You’re worried about me?! I should be saying that!” Pidge laughed, but it came out as a partial-sob. Matt picked her up off the ground and spun her.

“I can’t believe you flew a giant lion before you even flew one of the Garrison’s spacecrafts!” Matt said, chuckling as Pidge howled with laughter, dropping to her feet and slapping him playfully on the arm. Matt’s nose and eyes were red, as were Pidge’s. They looked… like twins. 

“You want to see it? I can show you all the additions I wired into it and—”

“Not today,” Shiro interrupted. “You still have to rest up, until your headache’s gone.”

Pidge scowled at him, but she looked more like a kitten without her glasses and her post-crying face. “Who said I had a headache?”

“When you complained about my _piloting skills_ ,” Lance said, voice bitter.

Pidge bunched up her fists at her sides until her father approached from behind and gripped her shoulders. “Relaxing sounds like a good idea. You can tell me all about how you came to be here,” he suggested.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Shiro agreed.

“Shiro, you still have to tell me how you got out of the prison,” Matt said, and Shiro smiled wistfully, pushing Matt after Pidge, and her father with a hand on his shoulder.

Shiro sighed as he said, “Some things are easier done than said.”

  


  


“I’m taking classes here over the summer, and with my job I’ll get free housing until fall,” Keith was explain over the machinery running in the background. He was melding pieces of the hovercraft’s frame into place, and smoothing over the fusion line until it was perfect. The innards were all put together, which left Keith with the less-meticulous task of putting the exterior on. 

“How long have you had that planned?” Shiro asked, and Keith shrugged. “You never talk about home at all. Don’t you want to go back?”

“Not really,” he answered. “Besides, you mentioned that you had an internship here. I’ll be closer to you this way. And also my hovercraft.”

“Priorities,” Shiro said, amused. He was leaning on a stool nearby, goggles applied though he was far enough away to avoid the sparks. “Could you come here for a sec? I have something I want to show you.”

“In a minute,” he said, biting his lip as he focused on finishing the last bit of the fusion line. All trace of red from the Zero One piece was gone, sanded away and left as bare silver. The rusted bits were cleaned and removed, and it turned out to be in great condition. Unpainted, though, the frame looked like a patchwork. 

Keith stepped away from it and pushed his goggles up to the top of his head. It looked… like a mess, but that would be fixed soon.

He walked over to where Shiro sat and said, “What is it?”

Shiro grinned at him, reaching a hand out and taking Keith’s. His hands were black from working, and he no doubt had raccoon eyes from the goggles. They were eye level with Shiro slouched on the stool, so it didn’t take much for him to press his lips to Keith’s. He was certain his lips tasted like metal, but Shiro never complained about it when they parted. In fact, he smiled and said, “I’d love to spend the summer with you.”

Keith became aware of how sweaty he was and how stupid he must look with his raccoon eyes and his hair was probably ridiculous—

Shiro put his hands on Keith’s waist and tugged him closer, so he stood between Shiro’s legs. His feet were propped up on the spokes of the stool, and Keith’s remained flat on the concrete no matter how much it felt like he was suddenly in a zero-gravity chamber. His head felt dizzy.

“I’ll be in the university apartments. Do you have any plans for dinner?” he asked.

“What do you mean? Tonight?” Keith asked, and Shiro shook his head.

“Every night this summer.” 

He laughed, and clinked his goggles against Shiro’s, which were flattening his usually fluffy quiff. “I’d be down for that, yeah. Free food? Always.”

Shiro’s hands linked together behind Keith’s back, and, hands still black, he propped his forearms against Shiro’s shoulders. They were quiet and still, until Keith finally said, “What next?”

“I’m waiting.”

“For what?”

“For you to decide,” Shiro answered, and Keith wanted to think that Shiro was telling the truth but it just seemed weird. Keith was new to this—what was he supposed to do? Kiss him? Where would that lead, a ten-minute long make out session? That seemed counterproductive when he was supposed to—

Keith glanced back at the hovercraft and bit his lip. He heard Shiro sigh, so he looked back and frowned until Shiro smiled at him and nodded to the hovercraft. “You go work. I shouldn’t be distracting you,” Shiro decided. “But next time you decide what we do.”

“That’s a lot of pressure,” he said humorously, and Shiro rolled his eyes.

“How do you think I feel?” he laughed, and when Keith only stared back he added, “It’s fine though, don’t worry about it. Whatever makes you happy makes me happy, but just let me know what it is once in a while.”

It was annoying hearing that because it wasn’t the first time Shiro brought it up. It was the second time. They’d been dating for almost a month at that point, and so far Shiro initiated their meet ups and dates aside from when Keith worked on the hovercraft. The last time Shiro brought it up was not even a week ago. 

_It must really be bothering him that I don’t plan anything_ , Keith thought, pushing his goggles back on and returning to the hovercraft. He stared at it for a while thinking. _I mean, sure, I initiated our first kiss but what else have I done? Pretty much nothing_.

But what was wrong with that? Keith was content. He _liked_ Shiro’s suggestions, so he went along with them. He liked it when Shiro held his hand, or held Keith to his chest when they watched movies. He liked it when they talked and Shiro would tell him all about his day and what he learned in class. 

Did that make him a terrible boyfriend for not doing anything for Shiro? What did he _want_ from Keith?

After a while of glaring at his hovercraft, he heard the creak of the stool being pushed back. He didn’t turn around when he heard Shiro, closer now, “I didn’t mean to worry you by saying that. It just came out. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, all right? I’m fine with how things are.”

“Then why’d you bring it up?” Keith demanded. 

When he didn’t respond right away, Keith looked at him, and found Shiro’s brow creased and shoulders bunched up. “I don’t know—I don’t know! It was stupid, don’t worry about it. Please.”

“You’re just saying that so I don’t flip out,” he argued, throwing his hands up. “You’re too damn scared to bring shit up around me because I might break down, is that it?”

“ _No_ , that isn’t it at all!” Shiro exclaimed, looking horrified. “Keith, I just want you to be _happy_. A-And sometimes I can’t tell if you are because—”

“Because what?” Keith shouted. “Because what, Shiro? If you have something to say just spit it out! It’s not that hard!”

Shiro threw his hands down and erupted with, “Exactly! That’s exactly my point—you always look like you have something to say and you never say it and I can’t tell if it’s good or bad and it really stresses me out sometimes. How am I supposed to know if you like it when I sleep over in your room or hug you in public or hold your hand when you never tell me?” 

Keith blinked in surprise—he damn well hoped he _looked_ as surprised as he felt. “What?” he said, sounding hoarse. “I thought—Of course I like it, you asshole. I would have told you if I didn’t! I-I thought it was sort of a no brainer.”

Shiro was staring at him, and at last let his shoulders slump and he released a relieved sigh. “Jesus Christ—I don’t know why I was stressing out over that then. I guess… Figures, that you’d stay quiet when you’re happy when you explode when you get angry.”

Keith chuckled and said, “That’s what I meant by ‘no brainer’. But… maybe I should have clarified. I like it when you stay in my room on the weekends, or hug me, or whatever.”

As he said it, Shiro stepped over Keith’s toolbox and continued to stand behind him, wrapping his arms around Keith’s shoulders and tucking his head against Keith’s hair. “Hug you like this?” he asked. 

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? You gotta say it or else I won’t know,” Shiro whispered, and Keith scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“I like it when you hug me,” Keith said, but it came out bored and bland despite the grin on his lips. 

“We’ll work on it,” Shiro chuckled, kissing Keith’s temple before breaking away and heading back to the stool. “I’ll be over here if you need anymore hugs.”

  


  


Living in the apartment became tedious after Shiro agreed to Keith’s breakup proposal. He couldn’t stand the anticipation leading up to Shiro’s return from work, so Keith took to the university study rooms and ate whatever he could fit in his hand leaving the apartment. Sometimes it was an apple, or a banana, or a granola bar.

He didn’t feel comfortable contacting any of their mutual friends. Shiro always hung out with them more—and most of them, Shiro was friends with first, so that left Keith where he started. On the outside of the circle, an awkward freshmen _yet again_.

He was glad work kept him busy, and when he wasn’t working at the lab Keith was elsewhere. Professor Harris was a good friend of Keith’s, so perhaps he wasn’t as lonely as he thought. She often let him test ride vehicles the honor students put together, and she kept his hovercraft sheltered the past few semesters. 

One day, he wasn’t sure why it took him so long to think of the most brilliant idea ever. He was sick of the Garrison. So why didn’t he just leave? He had a hovercraft, he wasn’t a prisoner here. He could bring a blanket, find a nice spot on a plateau, do his homework there until dark. Though, the dark thing would be a problem, he could bring a flashlight. Later, he snuck out one of Harris’ battery powered lamps, and it worked like a charm. 

Keith became more invested in school, but his ability to tolerate shit dropped like an anvil through the basement of the Garrison. It meant the teachers he spent all year sucking up to suddenly started to get fed up with his constant remarks and critical eye tearing apart other students’ performances. Half the time it looked as though he wasn’t even paying attention. He was even dismissed from class once for staring out the window instead of the speaker, even when Keith could recite the last several lines the speaker said. 

“Your attitude is starting to intimidate the other students,” his simulations professor told him once. “If you can’t manage to keep your mouth shut I’ll drop your grade. This sort of class is meant to prepare you for your future, and it won’t help your future to be uncensored like that.”

Keith remembered responding with something along the lines of: “If my future employers can’t handle a simple word then they shouldn’t be hiring adults in the first place. We all cuss, _sir_.”

Suffice to say his remark wasn’t receipted well. He was sent out of the class for the remainder of the lesson. It was his last class that day, so he took the opportunity to leave the Garrison campus early.

Getting to Harris’ lab brought Keith through the simulator wing, and across the cafeteria. It was a five-story tall structure and he emerged from the second floor, high enough to peer down at the tables below and recognize a set of lab coats sitting down for a late lunch. He recognized Meredith and Shiro in a heartbeat, and steered clear of them. Thankfully, they didn’t notice Keith, and if they didn’t, they didn’t mention it. 

Keith was storming across the massive storage room when he heard a door open. The sound echoed across the room and took a while for Keith to pinpoint where it came from. He saw someone approach the railing outside the doorway a story up, and he recognized the outline of Harris’ grey hair tied up in a bun. 

“What are you doing out of class early?” she questioned.

“Got let out early,” Keith said, and he wasn’t wrong. “What are you doing here?”

She was making her way down the stairs as she answered, “I heard one of my star pupils was booted from a simulation today and an educated guess brought me here.” Keith scowled at her as she approached from behind one of the Garrison’s heavy-duty dune buggies. She looked concerned. “Keith, you know I’d hate to see you crash and burn.”

“No one’s crashing and burning,” he said, tugging on his backpack strap. “It was just a misunderstanding. I’ll be back in class next week.”

She had an uncertain look on her face, one that quirked her slim eyebrows upwards. She didn’t believe him, of course she didn’t. She knew him too well. And he recognized the look on her face well enough to back away and start heading for his hovercraft. “I’m kind of in a rush, so can we talk later or something?” he asked.

Her footsteps faltered, and it gave him enough time to escape a motherly talk about how she was worried about him and she wanted to help. He couldn’t handle the amount of bullshit in those talks—he rarely had those talks, and he found that he had little tolerance for them.

His hovercraft was sitting where he always kept it, and as he leapt up and mounted it, he fished out the key from his pocket. _God,_ he was still in his Garrison uniform. Thankfully, he started stashing his regular clothes into his backpack earlier that week. It was as if he was _planning_ on pissing off his professor. Preparing ahead of time was useful, so he wouldn’t even have to bother with the apartment until night.

When Keith didn’t have homework, he liked to explore. Of course, power was always an issue, and so he kept his longer explorations for the weekend when he had more time to prepare and bring extra fuel along with. That day as he slowed the craft after exiting Garrison property, Keith swung his backpack in front of him and pulled out his map from underneath his clothes. It was tattered and smushed underneath everything else, so after putting his backpack on again, he flattened out the map on the seat. 

The eastern side of the Garrison was crossed out thirty miles out—that’s as far as he could go before reaching the Colorado river. Hovercrafts were water accessible, but he wasn’t willing to bet after making his specifically for traveling over sand dunes and desert soil. Most of the time it meant he had to wear riding goggles he stashed under the seat cushion. No time for that now.

The southern side was where the college life was, so he didn’t go through the town. He switched gears and decided to turn the craft around, and head north. 

He rode as far out as he could. It was Friday, and he was always more pissy than usual on Fridays—that explained why he got kicked out of class. Half the time he wasn’t even sure if he should go back to the apartment knowing Shiro was done with work slightly earlier than usual, but then he’d cave and head back. They still had their movie nights, but on separate couches. It was a weak attempt to make it seem like everything was okay when it clearly _wasn’t_.

He snarled under his breath at the thought of Shiro. _Shiro_. He hadn’t done anything wrong and yet Keith had some unnecessary grudge held over him. It was idiotic and irrational, everything he told himself he wouldn’t let happen after their breakup. He _knew_ Shiro suspected that Keith blamed him for accepting the Kerberos mission, which made it all ten times worse.

He just—he just wished that it didn’t _have_ to be.

  


  


Shiro didn’t even have to ask if he could stay the night. It wasn’t like Shiro had a roommate to avoid—Pierce was their friend—but it was so common for Shiro to stay late at Keith’s on the weekends that it made sense for him to sleep on the futon. Which is what he did after getting back from the workshop the day Shiro yelled at him. 

Well, he didn’t exactly _yell_. Keith wouldn’t classify Shiro as a yeller, but he could speak aggressively when he wanted to, which was what he did.

It was a Friday, and Cookie had left before Keith and Shiro even went to work on the hovercraft. So when they came back, they sat around on the floor and watched a few talks on gravitational waves for Keith’s class homework. He had his back against Shiro’s chest, his legs propped on either side of Keith for support. With Shiro’s arms around Keith’s waist, he held his notebook up on his knee and took notes. As the video winded down, Keith found his attention split between his note sketches and the fact that Shiro had his lips against his neck. It started with gentle pecks, and then he just left his lips there, letting the warmth sink into Keith’s skin.

Shiro softly bit down and kissed the spot before Keith pulled back to raise an eyebrow at him. Shiro blinked innocently before pecking Keith’s lips once and pulling away. “I’m tired,” he confessed. 

“You don’t _seem_ tired,” Keith chastised. He checked his phone. It was nearly one in the morning. “Shit, maybe we should sleep.”

“You get ready for bed—I’ll turn off the TV and such,” he said, shooing Keith out of the room. Keith stopped in the hall momentarily to look back, only to have Shiro shut the door in his face. 

He went to the bathroom where he brushed his teeth and washed his face. He leaned into the mirror and tugged at the purple under his eyes. Weekends were nice because he could sleep in, and usually Shiro was an early riser but waited for Keith to get up before leaving to get ready for the day. They had slow mornings on the weekends, when every other day they had eight AMs to worry about.

Keith came back to the room and found Shiro on the futon fiddling around on his phone. Keith had a bunk with Cookie, which meant he got the bottom where he could stuff his shoes and dirty clothes under the bed. His comforter covered most of those things up. 

He shut off the light and sluggishly crawled under the blankets. “Do you ever think about,” Keith started, “how awesome mint gum is when it’s freezing cold outside?”

“No, I can’t say I do,” Shiro confessed, chuckling. “Why, do you?”

“Yeah, just now. It’s like, not only are you cold on the outside, but when you breath in, it’s like you’re inhaling ice,” he explained, rolling onto his side. He could see Shiro’s face where his phone lit up, and highlighted his clean-cut jawline, and his messy quiff that always flopped sometime in the afternoon. It couldn’t seem to stay up the entire day.

“That’s an interesting point to make. I’ll have to look out for that if I ever happen to go anywhere north of Utah,” he said. “Which I won’t.”

“But Yellowstone.”

“Okay, but I’d do that in the summer.”

“Okay.”

As Keith’s mind wandered, as it always did, he was reminded of Shiro’s warmth on his back when they were studying. His back sort of felt like his insides when he inhaled cold air while chewing mint gum. He missed the heat. He liked having Shiro’s arms around his shoulders, his torso. 

It took him a solid ten minutes of staring at the highlights on Shiro’s face before he finally whispered, “Hey Shiro.”

“Yeah?” he whispered back.

“You think you could fit on this bed?” he asked, and instantly Shiro’s attention was on him. That was one way to get him to look away from his phone.

“You want me to join you?” Shiro reiterated, and Keith agreed to it. 

He pushed the blankets off the futon, so Keith pulled his comforter down and shimmied closer to the wall. The beds were a decent size, considering it _was_ a university dorm room. And once Shiro was settled and had the blankets over him, they had plenty of room to spare. That didn’t mean Keith took advantage of it.

Shiro put his arm out to wrap around Keith, and he pressed his head against Shiro’s chest and waited patiently to hear and feel the drum of his heart. He tucked his head underneath Shiro’s chin after a while, and they stayed like that for the rest of the night.


	10. [ alive ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: brief references to explicit things ahead in this chapter.
> 
> [I made a music playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKj8biYIMb0p6XNIXLU5bESWuD4Pu6wRu) that features songs that I feel fit the overall mood of this story. 
> 
> That said: remember how I said I'd be writing a lot this weekend? Well, I finished this entire fic early this morning at like 2:30AM so I'm just gonna gradually post the rest between today and tomorrow.

That summer Keith spent nearly all of his free time at Shiro’s apartment. He always wanted an apartment, something he could call his own, go to, and not have TrollhouseCookie playing video games in it. It was so nice and peaceful, and he found himself spending more time there than he ever did Shiro’s old dorm room.

Shiro’s old dorm wasn’t bad, on the contrary. It was larger than the freshmen dorms, but Keith had a feeling that Shiro didn’t want to invade Pierce’s space by bringing Keith around constantly. So one of the few times Keith visited, Pierce was visiting family.

The dorm was spacious and was equipped with desks twice the size of the one he currently had. The closets were walk-in accessible, and they even had a full-sized couch between their two lofts. “It bums me out not having a huge window though,” Shiro told Keith as he collapsed onto the couch in amazement.

“Dude, I wouldn’t even be worrying about that. Look at how much space you have!” Keith exclaimed, raising his arms up in time for Shiro to plop down, and let Keith’s arm fall over his shoulders. 

Shiro’s loft was equipped with Christmas lights underneath, courtesy of Meredith’s persistence. There was a bookshelf underneath it, along with several book series and movies stashed away. There was a place for snacks, and a trash can off to the side. Keith’s eyes then focused over by the closets, where he noted only the appearance of dirty clothes on the floor.

“Do you _not_ have a hamper?” Keith said, pointed to the abomination on the floor.

Shiro leaned over to see and settled back down and said, “I just put it in a bag when I need to wash them, why?”

“They’re just gonna get even filthier sitting on the ground.”

“There’s not that many, it’s fine,” Shiro told him. He then pulled on Keith’s chin, turning his eyes to where Shiro was smiling and said, “Stop looking at my dirty laundry. I’m a college student about to start an internship. I think my laundry deserves to be put on the back burner.”

Shiro was squishing his cheeks so when he said, “I just was recommending a hamper,” it came out smushed and slurred. 

He laughed and kissed Keith, releasing his chin only to cradle Keith’s jaw. The hand he had around Shiro’s shoulders tightened on his shirt as he leaned in, pushing against Shiro until he caved and laid back on the couch. Their lips parted as Keith moved his lips down off Shiro’s chin, down the straight line of his jaw. He kissed at Shiro’s neck, like he often did to Keith, and was purposeful when leaving a mark behind. Keith was always left to fuss over how best to cover it up. It wasn’t like his hair was long enough to be a sufficient concealer. 

He could hear Shiro’s heavy breath and the strain to keep his voice from breaking through in weak little moans and whimpers. Keith tugged his fingers against the collar of Shiro’s shirt before breaking his lips away to tug on it again and say, “Take it off.”

He could tell Shiro wanted to say something impertinent in response, but couldn’t trust his voice enough to say it. He sat up a little, enough to tug the hem of his shirt over his head. Keith grabbed it and pulled it off his hands as he said, “Add it to your nonexistent hamper,” before chucking the shirt blindly in the direction of Shiro’s closet.

“You little sh—shit,” he stammered, dissolving into the couch when Keith flattened his cool hand against Shiro’s stomach and trailed his fingers down his abdomen. “Your fingers are cold.”

“So you want me to stop?”

Shiro was obviously about to object to stopping before Keith pressed their lips together and skimmed his fingers under the elastic waistband of his sweatpants. Their kiss felt exceedingly longer than it actually was, and after Shiro panted for breath, he managed to say, “They’ll warm up.”

Keith snickered, and let Shiro hold his hand—his felt warm and slightly sweaty, but Keith wasn’t looking at their hands at the moment. He found it distracting and wonderful listening to Shiro’s breathy sounds, and those indecipherable words that Keith loved to hear muttered under his breath. 

When he finished, Keith got up off the couch and tried unsuccessfully to ignore how difficult it was to walk with a hard on. There was a towel in Shiro’s closet that required stepping over his floordrobe to get to it. When he came back, Shiro was sprawled over the couch, reaching his clean hand out to the towel. Keith passed it to him, a grin on his lips.

“Now you actually _have_ to do laundry.”

“Don’t bring it up now,” Shiro groaned. Keith sat on the floor, his back against the couch. He was wondering whether or not Pierce could tell what they did on the couch. Shiro pulled his pants back on before leaning over Keith’s shoulders and kissing the top of his head. “You haven’t had a hand job before?” he asked.

Keith scowled a little and said, defensively, “No, why?”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Shiro said, “Would it be okay for me to maybe…?” he broke off, the hands in front of Keith’s eyes moving down the length of his chest. Shiro hadn’t even gotten close to his waistband before he was already jittery inside and feeling… _explosive_. 

He grabbed onto Shiro’s wrists and pulled them away lightly. “Not today. Another time?”

Shiro’s wrists were soft were Keith rubbed absent circles over them as he answered with a light, “Yeah, that sounds fine.”

He leaned his head back against Shiro’s legs and they stayed like that for a while. Keith’s eyes were closed as Shiro threaded his fingers through his hair, and massaged his scalp. The small window in Shiro’s dorm let in warm orange evening light, and eventually, Keith figured what was on his mind was a proper distance from post-hand-job topics. 

“So…” he started. “You’ve mentioned you were in a relationship before.”

Shiro hummed his affirmation. “When I was a freshmen. The person I was with transferred schools.”

“Is that why you broke up?” Keith asked, and Shiro’s fingers paused in his hair. He glanced up at Shiro, but couldn’t quite see his face.

“No, that wasn’t it,” he said. “What brings this up?”

Keith frowned a little, closing his eyes again. “You’re more experienced than me, so I figured that might have had something to do with it.” 

“Mostly it’s what Pierce has told me,” Shiro confessed. “But he’s straight—some of his tips are still relevant though.”

“ _Pierce?_ ” Keith exclaimed. “Since when was _Pierce_ —?!”

Shiro laughed, saying, “Pierce has always been a lady’s man. You know I met Meredith when she was dating Pierce as a freshmen.”

“Seriously? I never would have guessed,” he confessed. Shiro’s hands were mesmerizing, combing over his scalp and every now and then dipping to his neck and soothing the skin there. He pressed his thumb over Keith’s spine, and eased the tension out of his shoulder with his other hand. Shiro’s ability to massage the stress and tension out of Keith was within the top ten reasons on Keith’s list.

At the time Keith nearly drifted off to the rhythm of Shiro’s hands against his skin, he was wondering how great it felt. How great it _would_ feel, once Keith was able to convince himself that letting Shiro see him completely exposed and vulnerable wouldn’t be the end of the world.

  


  


It was the morning after their argument, when Keith woke up and remembered instantly that he asked Shiro to sleep on the bed with him. He felt warm and jittery inside when he realized that Shiro was awake and reading something off his phone, waiting for Keith to wake up. “How long have you been up?” he asked, pulling back a bit to rest his chin against Shiro’s shoulder.

Shiro glanced at him, his arm still wrapped around Keith and his hand now rubbing against his side. The blinds in the room were closed, but a strip of light illuminated part of the ceiling. “Not long,” Shiro said. “Maybe an hour.”

“Holy shit, why didn’t you wake up?” Keith asked, startled. He started to sit up, but Shiro pulled him back down and kissed his hair.

“It’s only seven in the morning—I wasn’t gonna wake you up at six,” he said, voice hushed. “And I was doing some research.”

“What on?” Keith asked, settling his head back down on Shiro’s shoulder. It looked like an article of some sort, and the APA format made him think it was for school.

“After the panic attack you had at the junkyard, I did a lot of research on anxiety-induced panic attacks,” he confessed, quiet and calm and completely opposite of the way Keith’s insides condensed. “It’s really interesting, actually—you know my first semester I was actually at a different college at the Garrison? I was going to major in neuroscience and study the brain. Then I transferred to the space exploration program and here I am.”

“I never knew,” Keith confessed. “What’d you find out?”

“Well, I’ve mostly been trying to figure out how to help you in those situations,” he admitted, bringing up a different page and showing it to Keith. “And yesterday, when you said I was scared, about talking to you in fear of triggering a panic attack… I really want to prove otherwise. I want you to feel safe, if you happen to have an attack when I’m around.”

Keith was staring at Shiro near the end, and eventually Shiro looked at him and laughed nervously. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, amused.

“Do all boyfriends do this?” Keith asked, and Shiro laughed, squeezing his arm him and pressing his face against Keith’s. 

“Only the good eggs,” he replied.

  


  


A cloud of dust blinded Keith momentarily, and dried his tongue with sand. He spat it off the side of his hovercraft. The map in his grip was flapping in the wind. He was pushing fifty miles an hour across the edge of a canyon.

He came to a break in the cliff face that sent his hovercraft swerving to the side to avoid the jump. Keith wasn’t all that familiar with truly going “airborne” with the hovercraft, but as he lowered the altitude and leaned to look down the crevice, he saw that the opposite ledge was lower. _Would_ an impact even cause anything? When the fans were going, there was little give under the five-foot air pocket. 

Keith decided to test it. He started by testing the fall off a small hill, and went full speed up the incline before feeling gravity forcing him back to the ground. The hovercraft slid onto the ground as if it was finishing the gradual decline of the hill. It didn’t bob or sway at all on impact.

“Perfect,” he grinned, kicking the pedal down and speeding towards the cliff. 

The trajectory would take him in a downward facing arc to the opposite cliff. It wasn’t _that_ far of a jump, but it was different from taking one leap off a hill and taking one massive leap off a cliff. The hovercraft was passing fifty now, edging on sixty mph before diving over the edge, leaving solid ground behind.

Keith howled with excitement, seeing the cliff coming, coming—passing his eye level. And then panic set in. He missed the jump by five feet.

Frantic as the wind roared in his ears, Keith cranked the handles away from the cliff. The hovercraft swung out, one of the fans grazing the edge of the cliff. The ground was upon him, the hovercraft still moving forward.

But Keith never hit the ground.

The air pocket cushioned the fall, and though the front end scraped the dirt, the hovercraft was still going sixty, and yanking Keith forward. His head snapped back and in his shock, he forgot to breathe.

As he slowed down the hovercraft, his breath finally came to him and he gasped laughing. He became hysterical, and stopped the craft completely to look back at the cliff. “Holy shit!” he shouted, and the words echoed back to him. 

He cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled, “ _I’m alive!_ ” It kept reverberating back to him until he kicked the hovercraft back into gear and shook his head, still laughing.

If Keith hadn’t fallen off the cliff, he probably wouldn’t have crossed paths with the shack. He never had plans of getting to the bottom of the cliff and figured he’d explore the western side of the Garrison next. If he hadn’t fallen off the cliff, he wouldn’t have known it’d work that day he saved Shiro from the Garrison with Lance, Hunk, and Pidge. 

Beyond the canyon there were miles upon miles of barren land with nothing in sight except for a dot on the horizon. He chased after it, realizing that it was getting dark. He approached the figure in the distance with the blue lights turned on, when the sun just dipped under the horizon and left an afterglow of its rays in the sky.

The shadows fell long and hard off of the walls and the sunken roof. There was a tree outside of it, which was what he noticed first coming up. It meant there had to be water down there somewhere, so Keith stopped his hovercraft and went to investigate.

He figured someone had to have lived there before—there was a well on the opposite side, away from the root system of the tree. It was pump-operated, and after a while he gave up trying—he probably pumped that thing for five minutes straight without even a drop of water. And then he decided to make sure he was alone.

The porch creaked when he stepped foot on it and called out, “Hello? Anyone around?” There was no answer.

So he opened the front door.

It was a one room place, and all that seemed to be in there were a few cinderblocks, a tall shelving unit, and a really gnarly looking couch with a metal pole frame. There was a makeshift wooden pallet with a cloth draped over it as well, when Keith went over to investigate it. There was a layer of dust on it, and when he moved the cloth, a plume of dust and sand kicked up around him. He pulled back coughing and looked around the rest of the room. 

He changed his clothes in the shack and stuffed his Garrison uniform into his back, but not before taking out one of Harris’ battery powered lamps and turning it on. 

_This place could do for a table_ , Keith mused, looking to the pallet and the cinderblocks. He set to work stacking the blocks up to create makeshift table legs. Before long, he was debating whether or not to ditch the couch cushions. On second thought, he dusted out the cloth that was over the pallet out on the porch. He kept his shirt over his nose and mouth as he did so before bringing it back in and layering the couch with it.

As he did all this, his mind felt blank and he loved it. He loved not having to worry about what he was doing, and not having to pay attention to the small details like lining the cinderblocks up _just right_ or shaking out _every_ speck of dust from the cloth. He just didn’t care as much.

He rifled around the shelving unit and came across a roll of twine, some miscellaneous papers that looked like washed out and damaged newspaper cuttings. On the very bottom drawer there was a binder that he pulled out and sighed at the sight of someone’s old organic chemistry lab binder.

For most of the night, Keith worked on homework in the light of Harris’ lamp. Eventually he laid down on the couch and finished his readings there before falling asleep to the distant, speckled sound of dust and sand against the siding of the shack. He could stand to stay here for the night. Clearly no one was living here, so he supposed it was up for grabs.

Keith was out cold for probably an hour before being woken up by the brusque buzz of his phone vibrating in his jacket pocket on the back of the couch. He felt it vibrating against his arm and jolted awake, rubbing his eyes as he floundered with his free hand for the phone.

 _Where are you now? It’s almost one_.

Keith dropped his phone and his head against the couch and groaned. It was _so_ like Shiro to want to check up, because they both knew Keith didn’t have many places to go to. He figured Shiro had already checked with all their mutual friends and found out that Keith was nowhere to be seen. He wondered if Shiro saw that his hovercraft was missing from Harris’ aerospace engineering garage.

As he debated texting back, Keith’s mind drifted again and he ended up drifting off. The past several nights had been torturous where falling asleep was concerned. Keith hated falling asleep to begin with—it was a miracle he was even able to ignore Shiro’s texts as well as he did. 

That is, until his phone started going off again, and this time without stopping. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Keith muttered, picking up his phone and answering the call. “What?”

There was a pause before Shiro’s voice broke through. “I was just checking up on you,” he said, sounding guilty and probably looking as guilty as he did the day Keith’s OC textbook was crushed by the bus. “Where are you? It’s past one.”

It took a moment for Keith to remember that a while back, they’d arranged for a curfew that started at one AM. That was a while ago, though, when they were laying down the rules of the apartment. He figured that rule didn’t apply anymore. “I was sleeping, I’m fine. I’ll see you later.”

“Where are you though?” he asked, and he must have heard Keith sigh over the other end. “It’s just that—well, Harris called me earlier and told me you were kicked out of class today. You took the hovercraft?”

Keith scoffed and said, “It’s fine. It was a misunderstanding.”

“Cussing out another pilot _isn’t_ a misunderstanding.”

“Well, he started it so—”

“ _Keith_.”

“What! I’m fine, I’m sleeping, _goodnight_.” As soon as he hung up, he wondered if Shiro had access to the materials needed for tracking a phone call. But Shiro was more logical than that, Keith rationalized. He wouldn’t invade Keith’s privacy unless he saw that it was necessary.

He hoped getting kicked out of class and taking his hovercraft out for the night wasn’t seen as “necessary”. 

The following morning Keith woke up to the sun and a growling stomach. He brushed his hand over his skin, which felt gritty and coated with sand. It wasn’t, but after spending all night on a couch and a sheet in a dusty old shack, he wasn’t feel too hot. So he gathered up his things and, after studying the room for a bit, left the lamp behind. 

He’d be back for it.

  


  


“I really like your apartment,” Keith murmured against Shiro’s neck, his head tucked beneath his chin, and the feeling that he was completely exposed no longer registered in his head. He felt… safe knowing that Shiro didn’t mind. “And it came furnished?”

“Not really. All the appliances were here—I just brought my bed from home, couches my parents were gonna throw out… you know, the usual,” he explained, his fingers tracing the curve of Keith’s hipbone. “They’re bringing the rest tomorrow. We’ll be going out to dinner.”

“That’s nice.”

“Would you want to come with?” Shiro asked, and Keith’s fingers paused over his minimal chest hair and he looked up to see if Shiro was serious. “My mom asked to meet you. If you don’t want to go, that’s fine.”

“Your _mom_?” Keith blurted out, and laughed a little. “She wants to _meet me_?”

“Well yeah,” Shiro said, sitting up a little and resting his head against the wooden headboard. The pillows were all mismatched and ranging between black and a patterned one his grandmother sewed. “I told you I’ve told her about you. She’s been wanting to meet you since we started dating.”

“That was over three months ago,” Keith said. “And I haven’t met her yet. God, I feel like shit—usually don’t people meet the parents within _weeks_?”

“Technically it’s still within weeks, if you didn’t count it by months,” he said, but Keith’s bland expression wasn’t having it. “But it’s fine. She’s never _complained_ about it, just mentions it once in a while. ‘Oh, when are you bringing that nice lad over?’ ‘I’d like to meet this fella you’ve been dating!’”

“ _Gross_ , I’m almost positive she doesn’t talk like that,” Keith exclaimed, laughing. “I’ll go to dinner with you and your parents if you stop talking like that.”

“‘Good heavens, what do you mean?’ Ouch, Keith! I swear if you— _no!_ I’m naked and vulnerable, don’t—” Keith’s hand, which was already on Shiro’s chest, went straight for his nipple and twisted it painfully. Shiro crippled to the side, shoving Keith off of him and scrambling for the edge of the bed. He rolled off and screamed a little, clutching the blankets and taking them with him when he fell straight off the edge.

Keith had his hand over his mouth and gasped when Shiro disappeared off the side of the bed. When Shiro popped up again to glare at Keith, he couldn’t stop himself. He snorted and hid his laughter behind both of his arms. “Oh my God, Shiro,” he chuckled, which quickly dissolved into giggling when Shiro shoved him back down on the bed and threatened to tickle him to death. “Naked and vulnerable! Naked and vulnerable!” Keith repeated, voice rising until Shiro finally slapped his hand over Keith’s mouth to shut him up.

Shiro had a wry grin on his lips, like he wasn’t quite sure whether or not he should be encouraging Keith. “You do realize I have neighbors, right?” he said through clenched teeth.

“I hope they hear you screaming when we have sex,” Keith said, but they both knew they’d only had sex once in the apartment. Shiro just moved in no more than twenty-four hours prior. 

“Pardon me while I use your phrase: You little _shit_ ,” Shiro said, his hands squeezing Keith’s sides and eliciting another hysterical laugh. 

  


  


“You’ve got to be kidding me. It was working no more than seven minutes ago!” Keith exclaimed, seething as he kicked the gears again to try and start it up. The hovercraft didn’t so much as sputter.

Professor Harris and Shiro were standing a few paces away, their goggles applied and looking perplexed and just as disappointed as Keith. “I swear it works—give me another day and I’ll get it up.”

“I’ve already given you a two day extension,” Harris started, and Keith looked to her, expression broken. She sucked in a breath, tapping her notebook against her thigh. “But… I don’t see the harm in one more day. You’ve already impressed me with the design—and the bioluminescent lights were a great addition. And that they work is incredible.”

“One of our friends is in a lab studying the mimicry of biochemical emissions in deep sea fishes and offered to lend some for the hovercraft,” Keith admitted, his voice mumbled and sounding annoyed. “But thanks.”

After Professor Harris left up to the second floor observatory, Shiro approached the hovercraft and laid his hand on one of the fans. Keith hopped off the seat, scowling and wishing he could kick the machine without screwing it up even more. “It was up off the ground and I nearly took it for a test run but I wanted to show you guys,” he explained irritably, clenching his fists and throwing them down to his side. 

“I bet it was pretty cool,” Shiro commented, and Keith huffed in response. “You got this. Just one more night working on it, and you won’t have to tinker with it anymore. Though I’m sure you will, just for the hell of it.”

Keith was furious with the hovercraft, Professor Harris, himself—the idea that he had to ask for _another_ extension was absurd. If he was good enough, he wouldn’t have to ask for extensions. If he was good enough, the hovercraft would have _worked_ when Harris and Shiro were watching.

Shiro’s hand shook him out of his thoughts, and he leaned down to press a kiss to Keith’s lips. They melded together and the words and frustration on Keith’s mind vanished when Shiro pressed him against the edge of the hovercraft, running his tongue across Keith’s lips, hand running underneath his Garrison uniform.

Keith responded ardently, pulling at Shiro’s coat as they parted briefly, enough to gather enough air for Shiro to say, “Do you feel better?”

Keith pulled on Shiro’s coat again and pecked his lips, once, twice, and ended with biting his bottom lip between his teeth and saying through them, “Yes.”

He chuckled a little, rubbing his hands over Keith’s hips for a while longer as he let Keith hold his lips captive, letting him swipe his tongue along the inside of his mouth. It was so relaxing and invigorating, kissing Shiro.

After a while, he put his head on Shiro’s shoulder and murmured, “Okay. I’m gonna get back to work.”

“Okay. I’ll be in my dorm if you need me,” he told Keith, who nodded against him before letting Shiro pull away. Shiro left the garage then, and left Keith to fix the hovercraft. He turned back to it with a set expression. He would fix this thing if it was the last thing he did. 


	11. [ deserted ]

The day Pidge emerged from the healing pod, the rest of the team went back to the surface of the planet while she recovered from her head injury. The Altean shuttle pods were brought down and the first ones to leave the planet were from the group Keith brought up to the surface. Coran programmed the pods to take the aliens to their home planets before returning back to the castle. Each one would return in three days.

“We’ll contact the nearest work camp over and gather numbers for the next pod,” Shiro suggested to Coran after the last group took off into the atmosphere. Keith followed it with his eyes until it disappeared in a shine of metal. When he looked back down, Lance was studying him intensely.

“What?” he snapped at Lance, who raised his hands in surrender.

“Oh, nothing—it just looks like you rose from the dead or something. You have bags under your eyes,” he said.

“I’m wearing a helmet—you’re just seeing things,” Keith argued. 

“Oh, no, I noticed it too,” Hunk interrupted. “When we were waiting for Pidge to emerge from her life-coffin.”

Keith sneered at them and spat, “It’s not like we can all get eight hours of beauty sleep like _some people_.” He jabbed a thumb in Lance’s direction.

“Just because I wear a mask doesn’t mean—actually…” Lance paused to press a hand to the chin of his helmet. “Yeah, I’d consider it beauty sleep. But you’re still wrong about the eight hours part! It’s _nine hours_ , thank you very much.”

“Some people are more prone to purple spots under their eyes than others,” Shiro said, walking up to them and staring pointedly at Lance. “But right now we need to get to our lions and start heading to the next encampment.”

“Aw, but I wanna go back and hang with Pidge,” Hunk complained. Shiro gave him yet another pointed look, and Hunk deflated with a sad moan, lumbering back to Yellow. 

Keith looked to Shiro, who turned back to Coran briefly before they both passed Keith on their way to the Black lion. He couldn’t seem to stop thinking about their talk the night before, and Shiro’s List. He wondered what else was on it. He wanted to know even though—Was it relevant anymore? If he told himself it was, he’d starting walking on the track leading straight to heartbreak. He couldn’t subconsciously _or_ consciously convince himself that being Shiro’s boyfriend again would be a good idea. He couldn’t.

  


  


“What is your least favorite thing,” Shiro once asked Keith. It was such a broad, unanswerable question. It was the summer when Keith had his “free” dorm room, but spent all his time in Shiro’s new apartment. It was his favorite summer. He loved that summer to death, but tried his hardest to forget it every day he spent in the shack.

He loved and hated it for what it truly was: his deep, persisting desire for all that made Shiro who he was, and how the feeling flowed mutually between them. He loved and hated the fact that Shiro knew all he could about Keith, as Keith did Shiro, and it was thanks to the summer that could easily be considered his first few months living with him.

“I… don’t know,” Keith confessed, scrunching his eyebrows together. It was too early in the morning for this. They were on Shiro’s couch in the living room, Keith’s legs over Shiro’s thighs, and coffee in both of their hands. He went to the coffee for answers. “What’s yours.”

“I’m still thinking.”

“You can’t ask a question you don’t even have an answer to. That isn’t fair,” Keith accused. 

“Well, I have an idea, but it’s petty and unoriginal,” he muttered, scowling at his mug. “I’d have to say checking my voicemail.”

“Wow, that is petty and unoriginal,” Keith snickered, but given Shiro’s option, he gave his answer more thought. He leant his head against the couch cushion and stared out the window, thinking about his day, and what it consisted of. What didn’t he like? His least favorite thing. It seemed like something he’d have to come in contact with frequently, like checking voicemails. Like having to wash his face at night. Habits. Patterns. Spontaneity—though that really complicated his list. Patterns and spontaneity were contradictory, but that wasn’t unlike him.

“My least favorite thing…” Keith started, and hummed for a moment before saying, “is falling asleep.”

“Why?” Shiro asked, turning his head to mimic Keith’s, resting against the couch cushion. Their eyes were level with each other now, and it it felt entirely true and comfortable.

“Because I hate having to close my eyes and being unable to stop myself from thinking. I start thinking about the past and the future and it really stresses me out. Most of the time I count up from zero until I fall asleep because otherwise I would never sleep,” he explained, and smiled a little, sardonically. “It really sucked for a while. I guess I forget about it often enough to not let it bother me.”

“Keith…”

“I know,” he sighed. Shiro’s free hand, which had been on Keith’s leg, moved to tug on Keith’s arm. He let Shiro hold their fingers together. “And it’s really situational. I think it’s been better since we’ve started… you know.” _Sleeping in the same bed together_.

“Having sex before sleep?”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“There’s nothing wrong with admitting it,” Shiro said, and Keith kicked him for it. 

“But sometimes it’s—ugh, I don’t know how to phrase this. Because sometimes I overthink things, even things like sex and I can’t sleep wondering about what I did wrong or didn’t do or should have done and that includes _everything_ in the day, not just the sex part,” he said. “That’s just how my mind works at night.”

“Then we go to sleep earlier.”

“No way—homework is still a thing for me, you know,” Keith said. “But it was just a question and I answered it. You explain to me why your least favorite thing is voicemails.”

Shiro scoffed a little and rubbed his thumb over Keith’s hand. “Because half the time they’re a month old, and I feel bad for leaving them hanging. I hate _leaving_ voicemails as well, so I wonder if other people feel the same when they leave voicemails. Are they upset that I never acknowledged their voicemails sooner? I wouldn’t know. It’s why I rarely let my phone go off that long before answering. Even if it’s a telemarketer.”

“Interesting…” Keith mused. “I haven’t thought about it like that. Another thing for me to worry about—I’m just kidding! I’m not gonna worry about voicemails. I’m gonna worry about you starting another floordrobe in your brand new apartment.”

  


  


Keith shivered on the couch thinking about Shiro. He missed the murmur of his voice from across the room, the way he seemed to know when Keith needed to be hugged, and wouldn’t even hesitating to ask what the problem was just so Keith could vent. He loved venting to Shiro. He was the greatest listener, when Keith just… was not. But perhaps that was his skewed way of thinking of things. He had to believe Good Listening was on Shiro’s List like it was on Keith’s.

Keith huddled to the side and folded his arms over his stomach. Across the room he stared at a photograph he had of the Garrison, tacked to the wall, next to the grounds surrounding it. There was a photograph of the nearby cliffs as they tapered away near the end about thirty miles down the edge. The geological structures were part of the canyon, arranged in such a way that suggested a waterway once lived and thrived there. Now it was just desert. 

Keith didn’t know Shiro was deemed dead. He wouldn’t know for a while, but even when he had to make runs into town, he didn’t really hear about it. He saw the effects of it, and how Kerberos was mentioned here and there on the street. But he trained himself to avoid any mention of the word. So he just didn’t know, but it was as though he could sense it.

He curled up on the couch that night, and when he counted up to a hundred and thirty without any inkling of sleep reaching him, Keith pressed his face against the cushions and cried until his chest hurt.

He regretted avoiding Shiro for the last month they could have spent together. 

  


  


Keith never really understood his obligation to Shiro by the end of his last month until the decision came on whether or not he should attend the sendoff. By that point he was living practically off campus. He’d only seen Shiro once that week, and he made sure it was after Shiro’s parents left with some of his things packed away. 

“Are you sure you don’t want the couches or the bed?” Shiro asked him. The place was nearly empty without them. Only a few of Keith’s things remained—he planned on moving them after Shiro was gone. 

“I’m sure,” he answered. “You can take them.”

Shiro’s brows were creased inwards, and he had his bottom lip bit between his teeth. “Where are you staying?” he asked. It was one of the many times he asked Keith. “Meredith says she doesn’t even know—you two haven’t talked in… about a month.”

“She texted me a few weeks ago,” Keith confessed. “It was a short conversation.” In fact, Keith was almost certain that it was Shiro sending those messages off of Meredith’s phone. Contrary to popular belief, Meredith rarely policed her grammar and capitalization in texts, unlike Shiro.

Shiro sighed, looking down at the countertop between them as if to say, “Right… I was there. I know what you’re talking about.” After a while Keith drummed his fingers on the granite and decided to say it:

“I don’t think I’m going to go to the sendoff,” he confessed. “So I figured I should say goodbye now.”

“You aren’t?” Shiro said, looking up at Keith with a distraught look in his eyes. It curved his brows inwards. “Why aren’t you coming?”

He swallowed hard and blinked past the heat building up behind his eyes. “I… I don’t know. I guess I just… I never liked big ceremonies. They’re impersonal and too broad, trying to please the general population. I’d rather not sit through that.” It wasn’t entirely false, but the real reason was obvious. It wasn’t that he didn’t care—he just didn’t want to have the urge to break down and change his mind about everything. He couldn’t do that to Shiro.

“That’s… understandable, I guess,” Shiro said, and thankfully relaxed a little. “And you still have to sign the papers to cancel the lease. I left them in the study.”

“Thanks,” Keith said, stepping away from the kitchen and moving on to the room that was still a partial bedroom. The printer was still there—Keith’s purchase—and the cheap mattress he couldn’t find a way to move to the shack. It was a twin-sized mattress, which hardly compared to Shiro’s queen-size bed that was no longer there.

He found the papers on the desk and pushed them so they spread out on the surface. He wondered if this was what filing for a divorce felt like. The only thread connecting Shiro to Keith now was this goddamn paper. But eventually, the lease would be void and Keith would have to move on anyway to a new place. So he signed the papers. He was being logical. He was being rational. He could do this.

With the papers stacked up again, he brought them to the kitchen where he found Shiro now sitting on one of the stools. Keith took a seat next to him. “I know you can’t drink, but I could really go for some vodka right now,” Keith confessed with a sigh.

Shiro laughed a little. “There’s nothing stopping you. Meredith’s the only one who’s touched the liquor cabinet since, well, since my birthday I guess.” After staring at the cabinet over the refrigerator for a while, Keith got up and went to it. “You never _did_ take advantage of my being legal in alcohol standards,” Shiro commented.

“I can’t say I like drinking around sober people,” he confessed, stretching up and snatching the AIVI around its short bottle neck and bringing it down. “The quality stuff,” he mused under his breath before opening the cupboards and realizing there wasn’t much to drink vodka out of anymore. He used a measuring cup. 

Keith downed the licorice-tasting substance in one go before Shiro said, “Is someone coming to help you move the mattress and… stuff?” He stood there for a while and set the measuring cup down to look at Shiro clearly. When it registered what Shiro was asking, Keith snorted. 

“You think I’m seeing someone, don’t you?” Keith said, grinning when Shiro’s expression didn’t change, but the color of his cheeks did. “I’m not. That’s insensitive even for me.”

“It’s a fair assumption,” Shiro argued. “Then where the hell have you been sleeping?”

“You swore.”

“I’m sorry—I’m just _angry_ ,” he confessed, jaw set tight as he peered down at his hands on the granite. Keith studied him for a moment, and perhaps it was the buzz starting to build up in his head, but he had the feeling he should at least let Shiro know where he’s been all this time. 

“Do you still have the dune buggy?” Keith asked, and Shiro looked up, eyebrows raised in confusion.

“Yeah, why?”

“Wanna help me bring the mattress to my new place? My hovercraft doesn’t exactly have space for it,” Keith said, waving his hand absently in the air as if it didn’t matter either way whether or not Shiro accepted.

But Shiro was already on his feet saying, “Yeah, let’s go—you grab one side I’ll get the other.”

So, after nearly half an hour after another small shot of vodka, Keith was carrying his mattress across the Garrison drunk, hysterical, and all of the above. Shiro went down the stairs first so Keith wouldn’t have to walk backwards and if Keith happened to navigate Shiro directly into a wall, he’d laugh about it for minutes afterwards.

In the dune buggy, they covered the mattress with a sheet so the dirt wouldn’t destroy it before taking off into the desert. Keith was partially obscured by the mattress as Shiro drove and would lazily point where to go. A while back he found a trail leading down into the canyon, so they took it as Shiro turned to him and said: “Are you sure we’re going the right way? Town is back about thirty miles.”

“We’re goin’ the right way I swear.”

“Whatever,” Shiro muttered. 

“I found it after I fell off a cliff going sixty mph. It was great,” Keith admitted, laughing at the memory of it. “I thought I was gonna _die_. It was crazy, you should’ve been there.”

“You drove your hovercraft off a cliff?!” Shiro shouted over the wind, looking horrified as he glanced at Keith over the mattress. “Are you insane? Did you do it on purpose?”

“Yes, but to be fair I thought I’d make the jump to this other cliff. It didn’t go as planned—gravity happened,” Keith explained. “The arc was to narrow, you see.”

“Unbelievable.”

“I’m here, aren’t I? Take a left—over there, you see the break between the rocks?” Keith said, pointing to the trail. “Ya gotta take it slow otherwise the switchbacks are hideous and I’ll get nauseous.”

“You take this on your hovercraft?”

“Sometimes, when I don’t feel like cliff diving,” he confessed. “The commute to classes is fun.”

They broke free from the canyon another five minutes later and started across the great expanse of Utah desert. “Literally, _where_ are we going?” Shiro demanded, slowing down the buggy as if to turn it around, but Keith shoved the mattress at him so it bonked him in the side. 

“Keep going. You see that dot on the horizon there? Of course you can’t, the heat waves are obscuring our vision—maybe just my vision—but it’s there. You can totally see it! It’s right there—”

“Yes, I see it,” Shiro said. “I forget how talkative you get under the influence.”

“Who said I was talkative?” Keith demanded. “I’ll give them an earful.”

“ _Oh_ my God.”

When the shack came into view, Shiro went relatively quiet. It wasn’t like he was talking much before, but for whatever reason Keith figured Shiro would have something to say at the sight of it. He marked the dune buggy in front of the porch and sat for a moment until Keith managed to weasel his way out from under the mattress. 

“I found it that day I got kicked out of class for chewed out a student,” Keith said, watching Shiro watch the shack as if it would move and devour them whole. At that point, Shiro looked at him, and he suddenly felt self-conscious about it. “I figured I’d see if anyone would come by—since someone had to have lived here before. But… no one’s come yet. So I’ve been fixing it up, sneaking little things like plywood and stuff from Harris’ garage.”

“Keith…” Shiro started, and his voice sounded so depressed. He got out of the buggy and leant against it, staring at the shack sadly. “Why… would you want to live here instead of with me?”

“It’s not that bad,” he argued instantly. “I really like the quiet, and it’s nice. Just being on my own for a while.”

Shiro looked over the shack once more before saying, “Are you sure you’re okay all the way out here?”

“Yeah, I am,” he answered, and started to tug at the mattress to get it out of the buggy. Shiro ended up having to pry it out, and then they both carried it to the door, where Keith propped open the door with a cinderblock. 

Shiro didn’t say anything about the inside. All of Keith’s stuff was in here, at least, all of the stuff he could carry on the hovercraft. It was almost as if he moved out of the apartment without Shiro even noticing.

After dropping the mattress on the floor to the side of the door, Keith dusted his hands off and said, “Well, my hovercraft’s back at the Garrison, so do you think you could give me a ride back.”

“You aren’t driving your hovercraft _anywhere_ until you’re sober, but sure,” he said, steadying Keith with a hand on his shoulder and guiding him out the door. The screen jumped closed behind them, and Keith wandered off the porch steps on his own before looking back and finding Shiro staring in through the screen. 

  


  


The takeoff to Kerberos sunk into Keith faster than he expected. Shiro would never come back into his life. He’d never see Shiro again. He convinced himself of this, and forced himself not to think about it afterwards. The shack became a safe zone outside of the stress and aggravation of school.

His low tolerance for shit became a destructive element of Keith’s entire facade. He shut his mouth in class, though, unless someone ticked him off. There was an incident in one of his labs where a classmate accidentally switched their samples coming into class, and it screwed up both of their results. They both had to redo the lab and being stuck in the same room with the idiot who screwed up the results led Keith to _maybe_ , _accidentally_ shove them against the cabinets and break twenty separate beakers.

Language was an issue. He was kicked out of the same simulation class for telling off a credulous junior who thought he was hot stuff for being put in a simulation class above his usual peers. It wasn’t even the first time Keith did this to the exact same kid. Keith figured people always had two warnings, and Keith used up all of his with his teachers just as this _idiot_ did with Keith. 

“Got docked points for arrogance this time?” the kid asked Keith as they were checking the scores on the simulation. They were marked based on several categories, and most of them were perfect for Keith—except for teamwork. It seemed so trivial at the time, having to bother with other people just to get a good grade.

He huffed and didn’t respond, scowling at the score he got. So perhaps he _had_ yelled at the communications kid. “It’s not like you’re any better,” Keith muttered after a second, shoving away. “At least I know what I’m doing.”

Were they even in the same class? Keith checked the pins on the uniforms of the kids around them, and realized that most of them stepped back from Keith as he passed through. There _were_ different variations of pilots at the Garrison. He could be an engineer, too. 

“I know what I’m doing!” the kid shouted back, and Keith pictured him shaking his fist in the air about to declare a revolution. “At least I don’t bully my teammates into submission!” _or a fight._

Keith’s shoulders tensed, and the students stared between the both of them. They all looked petrified _for_ this idiot. He slowly rotated on his heels, facing the smug look on the guy’s face. As he did so, the students took in the figure of their professor approaching the class.

“ _What_ did you say?” Keith hissed. “ _Bully_ them?”

“I would classify it that way, yes,” he said.

“What, would you prefer I let them _fail_ instead of telling them what they did _wrong?_ ” he snapped, taking a step back the direction he came from. Back to the idiot glaring at him.

“Kogane,” a voice spoke up from behind the crowd, but he didn’t look, because the idiot’s glare was morphing into smug satisfaction. Keith couldn’t do anything with the professor looking.

 _That sounds like a challenge_ , Keith mused, continuing to approach the kid until the realization dawned on him that Keith _wasn’t_ stopping. Keith wasn’t even listening to the professor shouting at him to stand down like a dog.

  


  


“Assaulting one of our cargo pilots, repeated disobedience in the classroom, disinterest in lectures…” Iverson listed off Keith’s multiple offenses, which led him to roll his eyes wearily and peer out the window. He heard Iverson drop the paper on the desk, and could practically feel him seething. “This hasn’t been the best month for you, Kogane. And on top of it your grades are slipping. McClain’s parents are urging me to expel you from the school.”

At this, Keith looked at Iverson, and tried not to show how much the threat of expulsion terrified him. Aside from previous affairs, the Garrison was all Keith had. “ _Expel?_ ” he repeated, incredulous. “You can’t be serious—I’m one of your best students—”

“You _were_ one of the best,” Iverson corrected, standing and seeming to close Keith’s ability to argue. “Attacking other students verbally and physically will not be tolerated. You’ve become a danger to the people around you, and I can’t let that go on here any longer. Pack your things, Kogane. I expect you off Garrison property by the end of the week.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh imagine swoopin' in to sabotage the Garrison, finding your ex knocked out unconscious by med techs, and then being sabotaged _by_ the guy who got you expelled, but you never remembered his name because you never really cared.
> 
> I've been in a writing hangover all day after finishing this so I might just write some short spinoffs to cope *insert nervous laughter here* Also here's some pre-Kerberos art for you I made today: [x](http://gurlskylark.tumblr.com/post/151862386025/this-collegeau-is-really-getting-to-me-final) It's mostly just how I picture Keith's hair before his mullet days.


	12. [ missed ]

“Keith—you haven’t been doing your best these past days. Don’t try to deny it.” 

He felt like death. He’d never had such a terrible night in a long, _long_ time. It felt like back in the day when his anxiety would keep him up until four AM, and wake him up at seven for classes. It didn’t take long for Coran to notice that Keith was getting less than three hours of sleep each night for the past week. 

So no, he couldn’t deny it.

“Do you have anything other than nunvil that knocks a person out?” Keith decided to ask. “I’m not much for alcohol anymore.”

Coran caressed his beard as he thought for a moment. “Hm… well, I can’t say for sure, but we could have a look. Follow me.”

Together they walked from one end of the castle to the other, and rifled around the castle’s stock of nonperishable medicines. Though, Keith was certain that after 10,000 years, they’d be questionable to take. But Keith’s eyes felt like mush and his chest hurt and he didn’t really care whether or not he poisoned himself at that point. 

There were isles filled with squarish containers and cupboards and drawers. He followed Coran down them and didn’t read the Altean gibberish on the labels—as if he didn’t already have a headache. “Ah, here we go,” Coran exclaimed, pointing to a drawer and unlocking it with just a wave of his hand. He shuffled around inside before taking up a small jar of liquid. “This should do the trick. Having trouble sleeping?”

“You could say that,” Keith said, and was about to pop the bottle when Coran hissed in warning. “What?”

“I’d wait until you’re laying down already,” he said, looking a bit horrified that Keith didn’t even know how to take Altean medicine correctly. “You have to swash it around in your mouth— _don’t_ swallow it—and spit it into the bin.”

“So like breath freshener?” he said, and Coran raised an eyebrow in response. “Never mind. Thanks Coran.”

So when they parted ways, Keith booked it straight to his room, cradling the medicine like it would save him, or someone, from death. He couldn’t stand not being able to sleep. It was ridiculous and unnerving, and put him on edge the entire day. He wondered if his paranoia was part of the problem that led Coran to confronting him. He _had_ accidentally knocked Pidge’s glasses off because he thought he saw something in the reflection. 

He was going crazy.

Keith made it to his room and locked the door behind him before kicking off his boots. It wasn’t even mealtime yet, but he wasn’t even sure if he could sit through a meal without getting nauseous or sick from eating. So, without further ado, he collapsed on his bed, popped the cap, and swished the liquid around for a bit before spitting it out on the floor—he’d deal with that later.

All he remembered was staring at the underside of the bunk before blinking once and not being able to open his eyes again. It felt as though he was thrust into unconsciousness, and, surprisingly enough, he was finally able to sleep.

For over fifteen hours.

  


  


Keith dreamt of a simpler, happier time, before he knew the fate of the universe and was tasked with preventing fate from conquering all. He dreamt of a time when fate merely brought Keith and Shiro together.

For a while into their honeymoon phase, Keith spent a lot of time wondering how it was possible that Shiro liked him. There were nights when Keith stayed up late just so he could stare at Shiro. They functioned on different sleep schedules then. Shiro the early bird, Keith the night owl. But, as always, their sleep patterns synced.

He spent a lot of time holding hands with Shiro. Keith never thought of himself as a “hand holder” or someone who particularly “enjoyed physical contact” until he met Shiro. Unexpected Nuggets Of Personal Discovery was on his list: Shiro made Keith realize that he could also function just as well on his own, and linked by the hands with another.

Keith wouldn’t consider himself proud except for in the realms of superior knowledge in comparison to his classmates. He wasn’t proud in the sense of self-confidence, personality, position and status in life. The fact that Keith showered every goddamn day was a sentiment to the fact that he saw what he looked like, and wasn’t proud of it. All through high school he ran for cross country and track and it only every amounted to a scrawny abdomen and unproportional muscles. Keith had a few scars, ones that contained stories of childhood adventures or stupid mistakes. He didn’t hate all of them. There was one on his thigh that he loathed, and it was obvious and red because it wasn’t all that old—perhaps a year ago. 

He told Shiro about it once, when they were on the topic of Keith’s anxiety. “I don’t think I was ever… depressed,” he confessed. “I’ve never been to a therapist so I don’t know how else to describe it. But a while ago I was under the impression that… if I could distract myself from my thoughts for a little while, I’d feel less out of control. I only did it once, and it hurt like a bitch and it _definitely_ distracted me for a good half hour, but it really freaked me out. I don’t like looking at my own blood.” 

And he expected Shiro to pull one of his disappointed, disapproving looks as if to say, “Keith…” in a depressed drawl. Instead, Shiro pushed the sheet away from Keith’s exposed legs and asked where it was. He drew his thumb across it, and then each of his fingers. It made Keith’s entire leg tingle. 

“I’m glad you aren’t in that position anymore,” Shiro said, and kissed Keith’s shoulder, his neck, his cheek and his hair before continuing. “Thanks for telling me.”

They were in Shiro’s apartment, which was more furnished since the last time. It was the summer Keith loathed and loved to remember. The days he spent entirely in Shiro’s company. He was never alone. He had no reason to be sad, or anxious. He’d never felt so comfortable with himself before, and Shiro made him feel proud of himself. Shiro made Keith feel like he wasn’t simply a body containing a soul—he was so much more than that. He was complex and Shiro was complex, and they spent that summer trying to discover it all. Who they were, why they were, what they were.

Keith loathed and loved Shiro for it.

  


  


Shower Buddy was on the list somewhere. Keith forgot the number for it, just like he forgot the number of times the both of them spent washing each others’ hair in the shower. It’s what prompted number ten (which really should have been number five), “Having Someone To Wash My Hair When I’m Too Lazy To Do It Myself”. 

A detailed snippet of a regular shower with Shiro came to mind. It was a Saturday morning, and Keith was beginning to notice that Shiro showered more when the prospect of showering with Keith was there. Before Shiro was a constant two-showers-a-week sort of fellow, and Keith managed to bump that up to four. 

Some days were more of a spa treatment than others. After meeting Shiro’s mom, she somehow got the impression that Keith appreciated the finer things in life like bubble baths and gave him a gift card to Lush. It was strange, and Keith vaguely wondered if he’d been drunk enough to randomly say he liked bath bombs or something. He’d never had a bubble bath in his life, but now Mrs. Shirogane thought the opposite was true. 

“You’ve smelt like lemongrass for weeks,” Shiro told him as Keith rifled through their supply of shower and bath products and picked out a shampoo he’d been using recently. Keith frowned at Shiro as he turned back around. “I mean that in the nicest way possible. I love it.”

“You damn well better,” Keith scoffed, slapping the bottle in Shiro’s hand. It almost went flying across the shower given that the water was running and both of their hands were soapy. “Your mom’s choice is my shampoo of choice.”

“Maybe she’s telling you that you’d smell better if you were a Yankee Candle,” he said, putting a dollop of shampoo on his palm before snapping the bottle shut. “Close your eyes. I don’t want to get suds in your eyes.”

“I’m not a child.”

“When you argue like that I start to think otherwise.” Shiro lathered his hands together, and after a moment, Keith grudgingly obeyed. The water fell against his side and his legs, dripping over his skin along with the suds Shiro scrubbed into his hair. Shiro’s nimble fingers pressed to Keith’s scalp, and rubbed generously, gently, and oh-so meticulously. Keith would have closed his eyes either way. Shiro was magnificent when it came to washing Keith’s hair.

“I have a question for you,” Keith said.

“Is it a weird question? Like why tea is named after colors when they aren’t the colors themselves?” Shiro asked.

“No, serious question.”

“Okay.” Shiro had his palms against the back of Keith’s head, and continued to massage.

“Did you do this a lot with your other partner?” he asked, and was surprised when Shiro’s expected reaction actually happened. His hands paused and he pulled them away from Keith, prompting his eyes open despite the suds gathering on his brow. 

“What?” Shiro said, startled. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because you’re so good at it—I figured you had experience. I don’t mind, whatever the answer is. I was just wondering.”

He blinked at Keith, and it was the sort of reaction Keith would have had to a question of that magnitude. It was odd seeing the tables turn. Shiro looked like he was trying to figure out whether or not it was a trick question, or whether Keith _really_ minded, whatever the answer was.

“I-I didn’t,” Shiro answered finally, swallowing hard. “I never showered with them.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t like them enough to include in my hygiene routine,” he said, setting his jaw and reaching up for Keith’s hair again. He helped rinse out the suds as Keith thought about Shiro’s answer. They rarely discussed Shiro’s previous relationship. It didn’t seem relevant anymore, but it was _that_ summer. And Keith wanted to know.

“I feel like you’re hiding something about them,” he confessed, rubbing the water out of his eyes to look at Shiro. He was frowning disapprovingly at Keith. “Tell me.”

“I don’t want to worry you.”

“You won’t. What is it?” Keith demanded, taking one of Shiro’s hands and holding it between both of his. “It’s been five months and I don’t even know their name.”

He never knew Shiro to be much of a worrier—concerned, but rarely worried. And now he looked like a mixture of those things, and added uncertainty to the pot. Keith wondered how many times _Keith_ looked like that, when Shiro felt this gripping want to know what the problem was. He wanted to help.

“I… I didn’t want to tell you because I wasn’t sure how you’d react to it,” Shiro confessed, and glanced down at their feet before looking up again, eyebrows knitted together. “Maybe… we should get dressed first?”

As they changed and exited the bathroom, the humidity vanished and Keith forgot how chilly the university’s air-conditioning was. He rubbed a towel over his hair as he followed Shiro to the kitchen where he drummed his fingers on the counter and thought for a minute or two. Keith took a seat, letting him take his time.

“When I was a freshmen,” he started, fingers still tapping against the countertop, “I was definitely an ignorant, inexperienced kid who wasn’t even sure of himself back then. I always thought I’d end up with a good job, a wife, maybe a kid or two, so… I thought it was rational to get into the first relation that presented itself to me. 

“Her name was Emma. She was in a different program, different college at the Garrison, and we met at a party. She was a year older than me, but we both really liked each other. I really liked her. It was a messy relationship, and Pierce was my roommate at the time and I’m sure we never would have been friends if Emma never transferred schools. She _hated_ him, and she’d stay over in our room constantly to the point where Pierce was practically living in Meredith’s room to avoid her—and I think that added to the reason they broke up. They couldn’t stand living with each other. 

“But I shouldn’t get into the details of Emma and me,” Shiro confessed, staring down at his hands. “But I suspect she cheated on me on three separate occasions. And finding out I was also attracted to men really… it was really hard for her to take. She thought it was her fault, like she wasn’t enough or something to that effect.”

Shiro paused for a moment, hand running up and down the length of the granite before looking up to Keith. “I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t think it was relevant—that I’m bisexual, when I love you so much—”

“Shiro,” Keith interrupted, “you make it sound like bisexuality is inherently hedonistically sexual.”

“I know it isn’t, but—”

“But what?” he said. “Of course it’s relevant, but it’s not a deciding factor for me. You say you love me and the fact that you’re bisexual doesn’t make this any different from a straight or gay relationship. Cheating is based on morals and not sexuality. Whoever this Emma chick is was wrong to think otherwise, and make _you_ think otherwise—end of discussion.”

Shiro looked stunned listening to Keith go on. He felt so riled up about it until he saw Shiro’s eyes get glassy and teary. And Keith discovered that he never once saw Shiro break down like this. It was one of the few times he ever saw Shiro actually break down into tears, the last time being on the bathroom floor accepting Keith’s breakup letter.

Keith got to his feet and, unsure what to do, waited and let Shiro come to him. He held his arms out and let Shiro suffocate him in a bearhug. His hands clung to Keith’s semi-damp shirt, and he tried to even his breath as Keith rubbed his hands up and down Shiro’s back. 

It made him angry just to wonder about what happened, between Shiro and Emma. She broke his heart with her disapproval. It didn’t take long for Keith to piece together that was what Shiro was expecting. He was expecting another tragic heartbreak by the hands of Keith’s disgust. The thought made him cling to Shiro harder, tighter, and fervently.

  


  


Shiro was a sensitive guy. That much was obvious.

The one person, aside from Keith, who knew Shiro best would have to be Pierce. The man lived with Shiro for practically three years straight, in college of all places, which was a time for discovery, experimentation, and making friends. Shiro once said, “Pierce was the first friend I ever made at the Garrison.” Of course, now Keith knew that they almost _didn’t_ become friends. 

“He was really helpful, getting me on my feet again,” Shiro had said when the topic came up next. “Meredith broke up with him after Emma transferred, so we were both single late into second semester. I pretty much missed the chance to make friends with people in my classes because Emma invested a lot of my time. I met her at a party, and throughout our entire relationship I didn’t go out again. Not _really_ anyway. We went on dates and stuff.”

“Then how’d you meet the rest of your friends?” Keith asked.

“I met them my sophomore year,” he explained. “We were all in a discussion-based class and happened to be in a group together. It’s why not all of them are in the space exploration program—it was a general education class. We all had to take it.

“Pierce was really good at making friends,” Shiro said. “Still is. He’s more extroverted than I am. For the first few weeks of the semester we went to parties every weekend and it was exhausting after a while. I don’t even think—no, I’m _positive_ I haven’t drunk a drop of alcohol since then. I got so ill one night… God, I can’t handle my alcohol at all. I ended up apparently throwing up all over a girl I was flirting with and then Pierce had to stop me from letting a guy take me home—it’s so embarrassing I can’t believe—stop looking at me like that! Stop it!”

“I’m sorry. It’s just hard to picture drunk you.”

“Yeah, well, apparently I slur in Japanese so if you’re into that kind of thing…” Shiro wriggled his eyebrows at Keith then, and that pretty much threw the topic of Shiro’s party life out the window for the rest of the evening, week, month, year…

Until the going away party for Pierce. 

He was off to an internship centered around a company’s satellites based in California. It was reasonable to assume they wouldn’t see each other again until Pierce’s internship turned into a full-time job, and Shiro would return from Kerberos—which none of them knew would happen for another year or so. 

The party involved speeches, and speeches meant embarrassing college stories, many of which involved Shiro, and other people at the event. Meredith got up and told a few wild stories from their days in sophomore year, and how there was a time when both Shiro and Meredith had to retrieve Pierce from the roof of a fraternity house. 

The day Pierce actually left, though, both Shiro and Keith were invited personally to see him off. Meredith was there as well, and was already hugging Pierce in the parking structure of their apartment by the time Shiro and Keith showed up. Keith remembered watching Shiro and Pierce hug for a while, and how when Shiro walked away, his nose was red. When they got to the stairwell of the parking structure, he pressed his palms to his eyes and heaved out a wretched sob that completely threw Keith off guard. 

Keith hugged Shiro in the stairwell for probably fifteen minutes while Shiro murmured over and over again, “I can’t believe he’s gone—I’m gonna miss him so much—Who’s gonna look after him?”

  


  


“Here’s my ride,” Keith said as he nearly stepped out of the dune buggy while it was still moving. He felt Shiro grab him by the shirt and pull him back down until they were parked. 

Keith stepped out onto the garage concrete with a sigh, and started towards his hovercraft. “If you need me you know where to find me—oh wait, you’re leaving soon. Never mind then.”

Keith was almost about to mount the hovercraft when Shiro’s voice broke, “Keith, wait.”

His feet ground themselves to the floor at the sound of Shiro’s desperation—was that the word for it? Keith couldn’t exactly process the exact influx of Shiro’s voice, but it was definitely something he’d heard before.

_Keith thought about Shiro as he was now. He thought about the way he froze up, tensed, braced himself for the impact of something terrible around the corner. He had a way of preparing himself for the worst nowadays, and had backup plans in mind in case one failed. Failure was inevitable. Failure was what caused lives now, if they couldn’t save the universe._

_“It’s okay to break down once in a while. It doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make me like you any less.”_

Shiro hadn’t even approached Keith and the hovercraft yet before Keith felt as though someone tied his esophagus in a knot. He thought about Pierce, and how Meredith must feel saying goodbye to her best friend. He thought about how he should feel, saying goodbye to his ex. Besides, he’d never see Shiro again.

“Keith—I know you… you don’t want to do this,” he started. “But I’d really like to say goodbye to you.”

_Keith couldn’t say goodbye now. He wouldn’t let Shiro leave him now. Seeing Shiro so close to death, so close to collapse, left Keith with this pitiful hole in his chest where his breath seemed to wheeze out slowly each passing day. They weren’t like they used to be. A lot changed since Shiro chose Kerberos. He had to defend and protect Shiro, like he did for Keith all those years._

_Shiro wasn’t alone in this. He had the entire team to rely on. And he still had Keith, even though they both acted as if he didn’t._

Keith turned around, his eyes staying to the ground where Shiro’s boots were, stepping closer still. “This isn’t me disobeying our agreement,” Shiro said. “Even if we aren’t together anymore, I still think we both deserve a decent parting, compared to what this past month has been like.”

After a moment, Keith sucked in a shaky breath and said, “Okay.” 

“You have to say it. I won’t hug you unless you tell me to.”

“Okay, you can hug me,” Keith said, laughing, but the laugh quickly dissipated behind his uneven voice and the sob breaking through. Shiro wrapped his arms around Keith’s shoulders for the last time, his voice breaking, and tears spilling. 

Shiro hid his face behind one of his hands, his face pressed against Keith’s hair as he said, “I missed you so damn much. I’m gonna miss you so damn much. I still love you. _I still love you_.”

Keith couldn’t hold himself together for the life of him. Perhaps it was the hint of alcohol in his system that sent him bawling, the pain of losing someone already festering in his chest where his breath wheezed and his lungs ached for air.

“I missed you, too.”


	13. [ loved ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [music](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKj8biYIMb0p6XNIXLU5bESWuD4Pu6wRu)

“You piece of _absolute shit_.”

Meredith was on a rampage. She found him in the kitchen accepting a glass of water from her flatmate when she released her vengeance from the pits of hell. It came in the form of Reader’s Digest magazines, National Geographic, and a hardcover coffee table book that her friend shrieked at her for throwing—“That cost twenty dollars!”

“A small price to pay for someone I _thought_ was a friend!” Meredith started running around the island counter, and Keith took off in the opposite direction. She faked left and came around the right, where Keith skidded on his feet to escape. 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have come!” he shouted over their screaming. 

He ran for the door, and just as Meredith’s flatmate shouted, “Duck!” and the coffee book crashed into the front door. Keith staggered to the side, staring back in terror where Meredith seethed down the hall. “I—I’ll come back later,” he suggested, diving out the door and shutting it behind him.

He didn’t stop running until he was in the cafeteria and on his way to the garage.

But Keith didn’t end up coming back to the Garrison for another week. It was after his expulsion, and after Iverson saw him off Garrison property. He wasn’t exactly banned from the campus, but he limited his time there to showering, and sneaking out small supplies from Harris’ garage. It was mostly the scrap stuff the students tossed out, but every now and then he took a tool and vowed to bring it back when he was done.

When he came back to see Meredith, he had to pass by his old apartment door. He never really thought about the look and feel of it, and how it seemed so tranquil with the dark black door accented with white numbers. He stopped to stare at it for a while, and wasn’t entirely sure _what_ he was feeling. Since he couldn’t decide, he defaulted to numb.

“Keith?” Meredith’s voice startled him, and he remembered to be afraid and recoiled back from her, an arm raised. “I don’t have any books on me,” she confessed.

Meredith looked… normal. She was wearing a simple olive skirt over a cream-colored tank top, a trend she brought to the Garrison outside of the usual uniforms. Her hair was asymmetrical that day, bun lopsided and tendrils framing her cheeks. She had a calm, almost guarded expression on her face as they regarded each other.

She was holding a satchel by its handle, and gently gestured it behind her. “I was just getting back from work. You… want to come in?”

 _Not really, if you plan on pelting me with books_ , he mused dreadfully, eyeing her expression again. She didn’t seem to be in the mood for it, so he agreed.

“I’m sorry about… attacking you, earlier,” she confessed as she fiddled around with her ID card that would swipe them into the flat. The door opened automatically, and he followed her in. “I’m just… really upset.”

“That’s… understandable,” Keith said, his own voice uneven. 

Meredith tossed her badge on the counter, along with her satchel and then tossed her cardigan over one of the stools by the counter. “I just don’t see why you never contacted me, or Pierce even. He claims you haven’t even called in over a month.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me!” she cried out, but instantly faltered. “Well, yes, I’d like an apology. But not about that.”

“Then what is it? I know I’ve been a bit distant lately—”

“A _bit?_ ” she repeated, exacerbated. “A _bit distant?_ You come into my flat, leave saying you’ll come back, and I’m expecting a day at most. People don’t just drop off the face of the Earth like that, Keith. You can’t just… leave like that. Like how you left Shiro.”

“You know it’s complicated—”

“That’s an understatement,” she seethed, voice rising. “You tore his heart out, Keith. I hope you realize that.”

He wasn’t able to look her in the eye. He kept his gaze to the countertop, and kept himself steady by leaning against it. When she said what Keith feared, he felt that numbness from before give way to the pain building up in his chest.

“The way you acted…” she started, but broke away to shake her head with a sigh. “It was like you suddenly turned off a switch. And it really hurt, seeing you act like a stranger to us—not just Shiro. But… he really tried, Keith. He really tried to stay on good terms with you, but you were such a little _dip shit_ , going around ignoring him, moving out of the apartment. When you started ditching Movie Fridays, you know he came to my door in _tears_.”

Still staring at the countertop, Keith tugged the fabric of his shirt, wishing he could claw through his skin to stop his chest from hurting so much. But he knew that physical pain didn’t take away from the emotional pain—the scar on his thigh was proof of that.

His throat felt swollen when he said, “I didn’t know.”

“How could you _not_?” she snapped at him. “You think all those years Shiro stayed with you could be thrown away within a month? _Keith_ , how could you just drop him like that? With next to no explanation—and no, I’m not talking about the logical ‘we’ll never see each other again’ bullshit.”

“Then what do you mean? Shiro agreed with me—we had a mutual understanding over our breakup!” Keith countered. “It didn’t make sense to stay together!”

“You’re thinking too concretely, Keith!” she shouted. “Even if you broke up because of the Kerberos mission, you didn’t break up because of the emotional aspect! Jesus, Keith, it’s not like you weren’t still attracted to him, or _cared_ about him. But you acted like you didn’t! You acted like you didn’t and that made Shiro rethink _everything_. He thought you didn’t love him anymore because you didn’t even give a damn about how he responded to the breakup.

“It’s hard for people to take that, Keith, especially Shiro. You know how sensitive he is about those subjects,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck as she sighed shakily. “We both knew there was more to it than that, but… he couldn’t stop thinking about how, maybe, the timing was perfect, and convenient for you to admit that you didn’t like him anymore.”

  


  


Keith jolted awake to a spike of adrenaline in his veins he hadn’t felt since the shack, when he broke down over the thought of Shiro being gone forever from his life. He was caught off guard by the immense pressure building in his chest, behind his eyes, sending everything to a rolling boil. He kicked his blankets off frantically and leapt to his feet, stepping straight into the sticky spot where he spat the medicine fifteen hours prior.

He coughed in between frantic, short breaths. He visualized Shiro there, coaching his breathing back to its normal state. Keith leant against the wall by the door, sweat soaking his hair to his forehead, his shirt to his chest, the waistline of his pants damp. His eyes were wide and wild, frantically trying to piece it all together, what triggered it, what was he doing, where was he going, why was he walking? 

Soon, he was running. His breath flattened out, his throat felt sharp, and his lungs like spikes. The hallways illuminated as he ran by, one by one a trail of blue followed him.

He wound up at a closed door, and after knocking for a while, it was deemed to be an empty room as well. 

For a few minutes he stood staring at it, panting, hands on his knees. He was barefoot and the sole of his left foot was sticky from the medicine. His body felt weird and stiff.

Eventually, he stood up, head back, hands on his hips. He released a deep sigh, and turned to leave, only to be faced directly with Shiro standing not far away, regarding him with bewilderment. “Keith?” he asked. “What are you doing up? Coran said you’d be out for at least another—”

“ _Shiro_ ,” Keith gasped, gripping the fabric over his own chest, and feeling a sad, half-smile pulling his lips apart. “I-I miss you so much.” 

Shiro’s focus went to Keith’s eyes, and how they turned glassy when Keith rubbed his hands over them and inhaled a weak breath. “I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before, but—but I’m not okay with ignoring the past. It’s still relevant and I still care about you,” Keith said. “And even if having a relationship doesn’t work out, or you don’t feel the same way, I just… wanted to get that off my chest and tell you.”

For a moment, Shiro merely blinked at him, looking almost as though he hadn’t processed what Keith said. He was about to repeat it when Shiro finally spoke up. “I’m glad you told me. I don’t know if I would have been able to put it together if you hadn’t.”

Keith stared at him, waiting for him to continue. When Shiro didn’t, Keith blurted out. “That’s it? Are you kidding me?”

“I’m waiting,” he answered. “Because I already told you my answer, before I left for Kerberos.”

They stared at each other for a long while until Keith no longer felt as though someone punched a hole through his chest. At last he huffed stubbornly and marched up to Shiro. “You pretentious idiot,” he seethed, and the last thing he saw was Shiro’s grin before he shut his eyes to the touch of their lips coming together, and his arms going around Shiro’s neck. 

Their kiss was awkward, unyielding, and contained everything those two years took from them. And when they broke away, it was so Shiro could say out loud: “I still love you, Keith.”

Their lips were centimeters apart, and Keith closed the distance. Warmth blossomed throughout his body, and the adrenaline that brought him here hardly seemed to dissipate now that he was here, with Shiro, kissing Shiro—

He pulled away to bury his face against Shiro’s neck. He could feel Shiro’s blood pulsing steadily, rapidly, against Keith’s lips as he said, “I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes my first ever Sheith fic!
> 
> I hope you all liked it as much as I did writing it. It took approximately a week and a half of constantly thinking about their characters. Still thinking about their characters. I definitely have a writing hangover now. GAH.
> 
> I have another fic idea but it's definitely fantasy. That's my usual genre, so this was a bit jarring to write and actually enjoy. Overall I really liked tackling the concepts of anxiety, feeling like your sexuality is invalid, and how people cope with their emotions and thoughts. 
> 
> Let me know your thoughts, what worked, what didn't work, suggestions for future fics! RN I'm really feeling the Sheith, and I'm a firm believer that Sheith will be canon. 
> 
> LET SHEITH LIVE.


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